'The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
“Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this time period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station’s coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level.”
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence would be needed in order to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The business manager suggests that to attract more viewers to the late-night news program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. To evaluate this argument we need specific evidence to check whether it appropriately handles the situation or not.
Firstly, we need the data which shows the viewership of television station before the changes were introduced in time division for various news categories. This data will reflect viewers' interests in various topics, their interests in the advertisements shown and the topics that were covered in the entire length of the news program. Along with this, we also need data on similar lines which reflects the statistics for the late-night news program after the changes were introduced. Comparing these two will give us an insight on viewers' interests and their general receptiveness to the content shown.
Next, we need to compare the content streamed in both the scenarios. In the current scenario we can check for redundancy of information broadcasted or unnecessary news elements which can be removed or are avoidable to balance the time frames for all sections of the program. This will help us retain the essential content and divide time effectively amongst all the news options available.
Taking into consideration the local businesses that used to advertise during the late-news program we need to check the revenue generated by them for the television station and the effectiveness of those advertisements as a whole. We need to consider the various reasons resulting in the advertisers canceling their contracts. We must take a survey of the viewers, advertisers and other people involved with the late-night news program and analyse these results thoroughly to find the root cause of problems. We can check in various trial runs to impact of different combinations of time frames for each section of the program and then derive the general impact for that particular broadcast.
A detailed comparison should also be made between the late-night program and other programs of the television station. We must check if this conflict of viewer interests is ubiquitous or confined only to the late night-program. At the advertising end we must check for any possible arrangements by which we can increase revenue through advertising contracts as well as ensure that the program content is substantial.
Hence, to conclude the evidences required to evaluate the argument, we can say that a detailed study in this case is unavoidable and needs umpteen number of parameters, scenarios and possibilities to be considered before implementing any change in the structure of the program content. The following points summarize the evidence needed here:
1. Data which shows the viewership of television station before the changes were introduced in time division.
2. Data which reflects the statistics for the late-night news program after the changes were introduced.
3. The revenue generated by advertisements for the television station and the effectiveness of those advertisements as a whole.
4. Survey results of the viewers, advertisers and other people involved with the late-night news program.
5. Results derived from the comparison between the late-night program and other programs of the television station.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
the arguments are not exactly right on the point. Here goes a sample:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 530 350
No. of Characters: 2785 1500
No. of Different Words: 226 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.798 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.255 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.918 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 216 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 186 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 82 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.63 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.49 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.259 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.48 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.163 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 510, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...hly to find the root cause of problems. We can check in various trial runs to impa...
^^
Line 7, column 694, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...l impact for that particular broadcast. A detailed comparison should also be mad...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, hence, if, so, then, well, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 19.0 11.1786427146 170% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 68.0 55.5748502994 122% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2855.0 2260.96107784 126% => OK
No of words: 530.0 441.139720559 120% => OK
Chars per words: 5.38679245283 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.79809637944 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.9590061401 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 229.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.432075471698 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 882.0 705.55239521 125% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.0805219124 57.8364921388 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.130434783 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0434782609 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.5652173913 5.70786347227 45% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 11.0 5.15768463074 213% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 14.0 4.67664670659 299% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.271599927392 0.218282227539 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0983664776774 0.0743258471296 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0734184632869 0.0701772020484 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.137819570954 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0577819390783 0.0628817314937 92% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.28 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.68 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 131.0 98.500998004 133% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Maximum six paragraphs wanted.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.