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 is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In the statement made by the business manager he states his concern about the ways to attract more viewers and advertisers during a late night news program being aired on his television station. He states how increasing the coverage time of national news over weather and local news have led to a decline in viewers for the show and states ways to get back more viewers and extra advertising revenues. But before we can evaluate his argument, we need these extra evidences.
First of all, this statement is all verbose and no relevant data. No data has been presented by him to back either his worry or his remedies to get viewers as well as advertisers back. We need exact number of viewers company had before this change and after change. We also need the number of complaints being recieved before and after the change. Maybe, the late night news report have never been a popular show having a low viewers base. Maybe the city would be a early sleeper and the program not interesting enough to keep them awake a night. If this is the case, then no matter what they change in the show, it will always have a low number of people watching it. Any maybe, some notorious elemts call them and complaint about the show just to kill their night time. So, we need exact numbers here to better analyze the situation.
Secondly, the motivation behind this chance may be some sort of corruption. The show is a late night news show making it obvious to get less number of viewers because people doing all the hard work in the day needs to chill a little bit out in the night. So, maybe they would rather watch some light movie or listen to some music on television late at night instead of watching any news- be it, national, waether or local. And the manager is persistently talking about advertising contracts making things a bit skeptical. Maybe, he has some local friend who wants cheap television advertisement and maybe he is helping him out by making these changes and making the show a local show for the local people which would help his friend more than the company itself. So, we again need proper data regarding adversting revenues before and after the changes. Maybe, he is making a big fuss out of a small change in adverstiment revenue. Sometime, managers get overexcited and thinks of making a small change which could change the world- according to them. Maybe, here we have a similar case. So, without analyzing properly all the aspects, the company should not bring about changes.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to provide us with the aforesaid evidenes, we can evaluate the argument made by him more clearly and then make a proper decision that if we need a change in the show or not.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 10 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 499 350
No. of Characters: 2264 1500
No. of Different Words: 228 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.726 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.537 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.356 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 150 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 97 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 57 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 34 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.792 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.037 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.542 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.3 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.3 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.189 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 464, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
...w viewers base. Maybe the city would be a early sleeper and the program not inter...
^
Line 3, column 226, Rule ID: LITTLE_BIT[1]
Message: Reduce redundancy by using 'little' or 'bit'.
Suggestion: little; bit
...e hard work in the day needs to chill a little bit out in the night. So, maybe they would ...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, well, in conclusion, sort of, talking about, as well as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 44.0 28.8173652695 153% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2317.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 499.0 441.139720559 113% => OK
Chars per words: 4.64328657315 5.12650576532 91% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.72634191566 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.41826396625 2.78398813304 87% => OK
Unique words: 238.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.476953907816 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 729.9 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.9077038812 57.8364921388 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 96.5416666667 119.503703932 81% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.7916666667 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.625 5.70786347227 99% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.17609393419 0.218282227539 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0456945900537 0.0743258471296 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.065037524984 0.0701772020484 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.113423757043 0.128457276422 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0928670081157 0.0628817314937 148% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.8 14.3799401198 75% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 9.63 12.5979740519 76% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.13 8.32208582834 86% => OK
difficult_words: 79.0 98.500998004 80% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.