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 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 canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand our coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In the memorandum of a business manager of a TV station, he/she suggests that the station return to its roots and reinstate local and weather news to their former importance to prevent further loss in local business. The manager, however would require to present much evidence to back his claims.
Firstly, the manager is referring to only the late night news program in his memorandum. It is possible that many people who are interested in the local and weather news are unavailable to watch the program if it is cast at a very late hour. In this case, even if the former programming pattern was restored, the people may not be able to watch it. The manager, must thus provide evidence that adding a separate local or weather news program during a different part of the day (Breakfast time when people may check weather for rain/ other anomlies before heading out for the day or the local evening when weary workers may return to their homes and watch the news) would not be beneficial instead of changing the current programming pattern.
Secondly, the business manager argues that the channel is loosing business from advertisements of local businesses and establishments. He/she would have to provide evidence that this is not due to some external unseen factors such as economic problems in the region which would lead to a cut in the advertising budget of many companies. Evidence should also be provided to show that the station is not gaining business from companies and businesses from other regions since their news program can now serve a wider demographic with news from around that country. Since the shift in programming trends could be seen as a move by the channel to expand operations to a bigger audience, the move to reinstate local news would hinder or even reverse the progress that the channel has made to cater to a wider audience
Lastly, the complaints that the station had been receiving could be from a very small percentage of people from the whole since complaints do not address those people who are satisfied with the current news coverage. The manager would thus need to provide evidence, probably in the form of data from a nation/state/region wide survey that covers people from all walks of life or data that the programming is hurting the channels ratings. This would give the channel a wider perspective to better tackle their problem of complaints agains the current programming.
In conclusion, the business manager needs to provide a substantial amount of evidence to support his claims of the national news coverage causing the TV station a loss of business and audience before a move to the channels previous ways of local and weather broadcasting can be considered as a viacble move for the Television station.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 470 350
No. of Characters: 2253 1500
No. of Different Words: 208 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.656 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.794 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.544 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 165 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 33.571 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 15.136 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.786 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.377 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.621 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.097 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 43, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... the memorandum of a business manager of a TV station, he/she suggests that the s...
^^
Line 1, column 254, Rule ID: ALLOW_TO[1]
Message: Did you mean 'presenting'? Or maybe you should add a pronoun? In active voice, 'require' + 'to' takes an object, usually a pronoun.
Suggestion: presenting
...ess. The manager, however would require to present much evidence to back his claims. Fir...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 153, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...es and establishments. He/she would have to provide evidence that this is not due...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, however, if, lastly, may, second, secondly, so, thus, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.5258426966 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.4196629213 137% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 14.8657303371 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 11.3162921348 141% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 33.0505617978 91% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 58.6224719101 114% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 12.9106741573 124% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2290.0 2235.4752809 102% => OK
No of words: 466.0 442.535393258 105% => OK
Chars per words: 4.91416309013 5.05705443957 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.64618479453 4.55969084622 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68961434206 2.79657885939 96% => OK
Unique words: 212.0 215.323595506 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.454935622318 0.4932671777 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 708.3 704.065955056 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59117977528 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 6.24550561798 64% => OK
Article: 9.0 4.99550561798 180% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 3.10617977528 64% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.77640449438 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.38483146067 91% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 20.2370786517 64% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 35.0 23.0359550562 152% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 115.747991918 60.3974514979 192% => OK
Chars per sentence: 176.153846154 118.986275619 148% => OK
Words per sentence: 35.8461538462 23.4991977007 153% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.53846153846 5.21951772744 144% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 7.80617977528 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 10.2758426966 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 5.13820224719 117% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.83258426966 41% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.341463868996 0.243740707755 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.131160651034 0.0831039109588 158% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0818583973164 0.0758088955206 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.194508637648 0.150359130593 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0390744516915 0.0667264976115 59% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 19.6 14.1392134831 139% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.41 48.8420337079 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.92365168539 111% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.1743820225 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.79 12.1639044944 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.59 8.38706741573 102% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 100.480337079 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 11.8971910112 92% => OK
gunning_fog: 16.0 11.2143820225 143% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.7820224719 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.