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.
The memorandum from the business manager to the television station suggests the station to increase their coverage and time devoted to weather and local news and restore it to the earlier levels. While providing the recommendation the manager tries to reason with the fact that there are lots of complains received regarding the station's coverage of the weather and local news and local businesses have cancelled their advertising contracts leading to loss of revenue. The recommendation sounds to be prudent for the television station but appears to be based on some unwarranted and shaky assumptions.
The manager points out that the station has received multiple complaints regarding the coverage of weather and local news, but fails to provide information on what issues the complains were based on. Maybe the viewers are fine with less time devoted to local and weather news, but might be unsatisfied with the quality of coverage of the news, the station might be focusing on more sensational and irrelevant issues that are of no use to the viewers. The station might not be covering all the major regions in their weather coverage or might be providing incorrect predictions. If any of these issues are found to be veritable, increase in the coverage time won't alleviate the stations problems of losing viewership and revenues, in fact might worsen them.
Secondly, the manger tries to further solidify his suggestion by pointing out the loss of revenue that the staion is facing due to the cancellation of advertising contracts of their late-night advertisers. In informing so, he nowhere mentions the reason why the advertisers have decide the termination of contracts. The advertisers might have observed that the viewership of late-night talk shows and movies is be more than late-night news coverages and therefore thought of it to be a prudent decision to move away from news and weather to other broadcasts for better reach and more revenue. if the manager provides some justification as to the termination of contracts is linked to the dwindling viewership of the late-night news programs, adjusting the coverage time to cover local and weather news might upset their national news conuming viewerbase and would lead to further decrease in viewership.
Therefore with the current evidences provided by the manger to support his opinion of increased weather and local news coverage the argument is still weak and not conclusive. A further analysis of finding concrete reasons behind the viewer complaints and advertisers jumping ship is required.
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: 9 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 412 350
No. of Characters: 2129 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.505 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.167 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.8 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 161 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 141 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.692 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 17.233 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.692 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.379 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.599 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.142 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 330, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...ots of complains received regarding the stations coverage of the weather and local news ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 242, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...aybe the viewers are fine with less time devoted to local and weather news, but m...
^^
Line 5, column 280, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'decided'.
Suggestion: decided
...ons the reason why the advertisers have decide the termination of contracts. The adver...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 412, Rule ID: BEEN_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Consider using a past participle here: 'been'.
Suggestion: been
... of late-night talk shows and movies is be more than late-night news coverages and...
^^
Line 5, column 594, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: If
...asts for better reach and more revenue. if the manager provides some justification...
^^
Line 7, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...d to further decrease in viewership. Therefore with the current evidences provided by ...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, still, therefore, while, as to, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 23.0 11.1786427146 206% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2158.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 411.0 441.139720559 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.25060827251 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.50256981431 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84252191817 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 184.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.447688564477 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 669.6 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => 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: 31.0 22.8473053892 136% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 63.1081536194 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 166.0 119.503703932 139% => OK
Words per sentence: 31.6153846154 23.324526521 136% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.61538461538 5.70786347227 116% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.336609357047 0.218282227539 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.136131945574 0.0743258471296 183% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.114985975389 0.0701772020484 164% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.219469093558 0.128457276422 171% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0684832568793 0.0628817314937 109% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 19.1 14.3799401198 133% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.01 48.3550499002 83% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.4 12.197005988 126% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.76 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.9 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 98.500998004 98% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.4 11.1389221557 129% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.