'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.
This essay will outline why the argument presented is not an accurate depiction of the scenario and the various other factors the business manager of the television station has not considered when coming up with the claim, that restoring the time would make all the problems just disappear.
The most important factor that seems to be overlooked is that both the viewers and the local businesses are more concerned about quality over quantity. So as long as the limited time dedicated to those sections had an undisputably high level. Which served the purpose of keeping the viewers well informed about the local news without needing them to refer to other sources for the latest goings-on in their state and neighbourhood, and the advertisements maintained a high level of engagement with the audience and hence keeping the revenues on the up.
Viewers are more concerned about the accuracy of the stories reported and how soon the news is reported; more than how long a particular segment airs. For example, a Harvard study showed that viewers are more likely to engage with content that is good and to the point, over something that is long and feels repetitive. Hence the various complaints of the viewers could be addressed by taking a different approach and focusing on improving the quality of the news delivered in the national news and weather segments over restoring the segments to their previous lengths.
The statement that local businesses have canceled advertising contracts has to be accepted as a fact. But there could be various reasons that the manager has failed to consider. Like the fact that currently, the country is going through a sort of an economic depression which is a result of the global pandemic. And hence these businesses do not have the extra revenue to consider advertising and are more concerned with staying afloat in these tumultuous times. Or it could be down to the fact that more companies, businesses are moving their advertising to social media over the traditional old-school methods. As advertising on social media costs a fraction of the price and tends to have better viewer engagement. As the majority of people, today use social media more often than they tend to watch the news. As these businesses are moving towards a more aggressive advertising strategy, this would explain the canceling of the contracts.
Hence this argument is not founded on a strong base of evidence, and by taking the points outlined in this essay the argument could be re-evaluated and a different strategy could be taken up by the television station to address the problems they have come across.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 438 350
No. of Characters: 2158 1500
No. of Different Words: 210 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.575 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.927 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.618 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 150 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 126 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.375 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.858 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.327 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.567 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.064 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 153, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[3]
Message: “So as” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
... concerned about quality over quantity. So as long as the limited time dedicated to t...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 321, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...hing that is long and feels repetitive. Hence the various complaints of the viewers c...
^^^^^
Line 7, column 240, Rule ID: KIND_OF_A[1]
Message: Don't include 'an' after a classification term. Use simply 'sort of'.
Suggestion: sort of
...rrently, the country is going through a sort of an economic depression which is a result o...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 814, 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.
...often than they tend to watch the news. As these businesses are moving towards a m...
^^
Line 9, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...lain the canceling of the contracts. Hence this argument is not founded on a stron...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, hence, if, look, so, well, as to, for example, sort of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2202.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 438.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 5.02739726027 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57476223824 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67660155966 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481735159817 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 685.8 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => 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: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 71.9946829634 57.8364921388 124% => OK
Chars per sentence: 137.625 119.503703932 115% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.375 23.324526521 117% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.6875 5.70786347227 65% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.170788766543 0.218282227539 78% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0539632772012 0.0743258471296 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0392415752301 0.0701772020484 56% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0966958705711 0.128457276422 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0299213433496 0.0628817314937 48% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.0 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.19 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.65 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.