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 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 manager of the television station makes a bold claim that ratings have gone down due to a lack of coverage regarding weather and local news. However, the author does not provide evidence to support his or her assumption. This speculation is rife with holes and inaccuracies that must be addressed with the correct supporting evidence in the following manner.
For one thing, the author makes an assumption that they're losing advertising revenue and viewers because they changed their focus from local news and weather to national news. However, can it not be that viewers are just getting their national news from smart devices now? Thus, leading to lower ratings during this time frame. Numerical data has to be provided to make an irrefutable linkage between the two of how things were before and now.
Furthermore, the author never mentions how much time has been devoted to these categories before and now. This is important evidence because time is relative as we know. For example, if they used to devote 5 mins rather than 15 mins, well this makes a huge difference. The author needs to include this information as evidence to sustain his or her view. Additionally, the author mentions that companies have canceled their late-news advertisement deals with them for the same reasons. Again, can it now be that they found cheaper platforms like social media companies and has nothing to do with what they're airing?
Finally, the manager of the television station claims that people called in to complain about the coverage of local news and weather. The author does not supply the number of persons who called and inquired about this topic. Could it be one or one hundred? There is simply no evidence to suggest that many people are concerned with local news and weather.
All in all, the business manager of the television station does not provide concrete evidence to sway corporate executives to devote more time to weather and local news to its former level. As it stands now there are too many holes and assumptions that severely weaken his or her point of view. The evidence that I discussed must be addressed if the television manager wants to persuade its directors.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 371 350
No. of Characters: 1782 1500
No. of Different Words: 188 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.389 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.803 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.435 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 125 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 97 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 55 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 33 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.55 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.095 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.45 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.302 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.517 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.101 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 52, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: they're
...ng, the author makes an assumption that theyre losing advertising revenue and viewers ...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 601, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: they're
...mpanies and has nothing to do with what theyre airing? Finally, the manager of the ...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, furthermore, however, if, regarding, so, thus, well, as to, for example, for one thing
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1827.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 369.0 441.139720559 84% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.9512195122 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.38284983912 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.49382283393 2.78398813304 90% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.514905149051 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 578.7 705.55239521 82% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 37.2625817678 57.8364921388 64% => OK
Chars per sentence: 91.35 119.503703932 76% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.45 23.324526521 79% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.75 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.285610739214 0.218282227539 131% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0856083541539 0.0743258471296 115% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.079661215771 0.0701772020484 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.168033217504 0.128457276422 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0341617258584 0.0628817314937 54% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.1 14.3799401198 77% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.43 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.87 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 78.0 98.500998004 79% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.