The following is the memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"Over the past year, our late-night programs have devoted increased time to national news and less time to local and weather news. During this time period, most of the complaints received from our viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise in our late-night programs have just canceled the advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers and to avoid losing any further revenues, we should restore the time devoted to the 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 our argument.
The buisness manager of a television station has suggested to increase the time devoted to weather and local news in the late night program rather than showing the national news. It has been concluded because there have been many complaints from the viewers concerned with the weather and local news previous year and the sponsors have backed out from the late-night program recently. According to me, the argument by the manager is flawed due to the three assumptions made.
Firstly, the manager has assumed that the complaints were concerned with the weather and local news because they did not want to see the national news. However, the manager has crossed out the possibility of the anchor or host of the news channel being the reason for these complaints. For example, if a person dislikes a show because there is an actor performing seriously bad in it, it does not mean that the plot, story, direction and the idea of the show is bad and it needs to be stopped. If the concerned actor would be replaced with someone better, the show can come out in flying colours. Here, the show is analogous to the national news and that actor being the host of the news channel, thus replacing the host might work out well.
Secondly, the manager has assumed that the interest of people in weather and local news would be the same as it was one year ago. There might be a flood in the premises in the previous year and that would have been the reason for the concerns. This does not imply that returning to the same news after one year would interest the same audience. News channel and news topic are fragile and thus the hot topic might change depending on the events happening. If there is a war like situation, every citizen would turn to the news channel and the national news would be the hot topic. So, the evidence of what were the actual concerns about the national and weather news about an year ago, might help to evaluate the argument better.
Also, the manager made an assumption that the local businesses that used to advertise have backed out because the national news was shown in the late night program. There are many factors involved in a business advertising startegy, they invest in advertising in a certain program for a certain period of time depending on their mathematics. For instance, if a company sponsors a sports league and later that year, suffers a huge loss due to independent reason, the company would not be in a situation to sponsor anyone for that year. Also, if the company sees that it had converted all the potential consumers into their customers from that league, they might back out next year. So this cannot be used to conclude that the sports league should be shut down. Thus, the evidence of the proper reason of the business backing out from advertisisng would help in the analysis.
So, the argument stands flawed due to the three assumptions made without the evidence. If the evidence is provided through proper scientific methodology, the argument could be better analysed.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 527 350
No. of Characters: 2441 1500
No. of Different Words: 208 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.791 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.632 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.34 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 160 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.955 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.846 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.332 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.541 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.106 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 386, Rule ID: ACCORDING_TO_ME[1]
Message: This phrase can sound awkward in English. Consider using 'in my opinion' or 'I think'.
Suggestion: In my opinion; I think
...t from the late-night program recently. According to me, the argument by the manager is flawed ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 674, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
...out the national and weather news about an year ago, might help to evaluate the ar...
^^
Line 7, column 296, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
...sing in a certain program for a certain period of time depending on their mathematics. For ins...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, however, if, second, secondly, so, thus, well, for example, for instance
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2503.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 527.0 441.139720559 119% => OK
Chars per words: 4.7495256167 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.79129216042 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.40352225432 2.78398813304 86% => OK
Unique words: 219.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.415559772296 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 765.9 705.55239521 109% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 37.5511771998 57.8364921388 65% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.772727273 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.9545454545 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.27272727273 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.31434049926 0.218282227539 144% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0989049294696 0.0743258471296 133% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.108843788938 0.0701772020484 155% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.184554874714 0.128457276422 144% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.145383103337 0.0628817314937 231% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.9 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.57 12.5979740519 84% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.65 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => 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.