The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"Over the past year, our late-night new 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."
The business manager of a television station has sent out a memorandum to restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. The business manager came to this conclusion based on the complaints from viewers about the coverage of these news and the cancelling of advertising contracts for late-night news programs. He/She has come to this decision with the hope of increasing advertising revenue and attracting more viewers. However, before this decision can be properly evaluated, three questions must be answered.
First of all, how much content is there of weather and local news? In other words, is there enough content for weather and local news to promulgate to the people over a longer duration? It is possible that there is very little happening locally that may be interest of viewers. There may be less fluctuations in weather to share about. Further, there is a possiblity that there is a lot of chaos nationally that generates content in surfeit. If the above scenarios could hold true, the business manager's memorandum may not be the most prudent.
Secondly, would a reduction in advertising not have a reverse effect? Perhaps, a reduction in advertising would reduce the idle time during news announcements, in turn, attracting more interest from viewers. It could so happen that viewers tend to start watching news more after learning the less number of tedious advertisements to watch. There is a possibility that this increased viewership would increase the cost of advertising, leading to a rise in advertising revenue. If the above is true, the original argument is significantly weakened.
Lastly, how directly can we link the reduction of late-night advertising to the lower coverage of weather and local news? There is a potential that adveritisers pulled out from their displays late-night due to lower amount of late-night watchers in general. It could so be that their target audience or the masses they want to address to would be more inclined to watching the news during the day. If these links cannot be directly related, then the decision made by the manager does not hold water.
In conclusion, the memorandum, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the business manager of the television station is able to answer the three questions and offer more evidence(perhaps in the form of user-specific and company-specific surveys), then it would be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the proposed action to restore the time devoted for weather and local news to its previous levels.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 12 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 426 350
No. of Characters: 2129 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.543 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.998 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.868 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 151 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.286 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.243 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.297 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.519 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 251, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this news' or 'these newses'?
Suggestion: this news; these newses
...ints from viewers about the coverage of these news and the cancelling of advertising contr...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 292, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun fluctuations is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...ay be interest of viewers. There may be less fluctuations in weather to share about....
^^^^
Line 3, column 496, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...scenarios could hold true, the business managers memorandum may not be the most prudent....
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 203, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ulled out from their displays late-night due to lower amount of late-night watche...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, lastly, may, second, secondly, so, then, in conclusion, in general, first of all, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2184.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 425.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13882352941 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54043259262 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93082980089 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 199.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.468235294118 0.468620217663 100% => 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: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.0318365958 57.8364921388 99% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.0 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2380952381 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.52380952381 5.70786347227 97% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.350816626319 0.218282227539 161% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.095633399884 0.0743258471296 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.087958039452 0.0701772020484 125% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.193586421064 0.128457276422 151% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0707192432322 0.0628817314937 112% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.9 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.53 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.31 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.