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.
This memorandum states that the television station is supposed to spend more money on weather and local news rather than national news. The argument seems to be reasonable. However, there are multiple logical flaws that are critical to the argument's logic in the line of reasoning leading to the conclusion.
The immediate question is whether viewers prefer national news rather than whether and local news. Though there are conplaints from viewers stating that the percentage of weather and local news is insufficient, there might be more viewers who love national news instead of whether and local news. The television station should make a detailed inquiry on viewers so that they could confirm which type of news are more welcomed.
Another point of doubt is that there might not be a direct relation between decreasing coverage on local news and decreasing local advertising revenues. There are multiple factors which can affect the local business manager on deciding if they need an advertisement, such as the current situation of the marketing, the operation strategy of the company, etc. The time on local news is only one of the reasons and it might not make much difference.
We should also realize that even if local businesses canceled their advertising contracts, there might be more business contracts from national businesses due to increasing program contents, which can also create revenues to the television station. The station is supposed to make a comparison on two sources of funds and decide in which way they can gain the most profits.
Lastly, increasing coverage on local news might not win local business cooperators back. They could have signed contracts with other television stations and they might not come back though the station has changed its strategy. In addition, national businesses can go away if the station decides to decrease the coverage on national news. This can lead to the decrease of revenues again for the station.
Because of the multiple unclarified issues which the author omits to answer, the proposal of expanding coverage of whether and local newsmay be unadoptable, and the desired effect that more views will be attracted and the revenue increases may not be achieved.
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: 15 15
No. of Words: 361 350
No. of Characters: 1835 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.359 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.083 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.542 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 134 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.067 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.498 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.467 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.383 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.671 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.127 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 241, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'arguments'' or 'argument's'?
Suggestion: arguments'; argument's
... logical flaws that are critical to the arguments logic in the line of reasoning leading ...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, however, if, lastly, may, so, in addition, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1880.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 361.0 441.139720559 82% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.20775623269 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.35889894354 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.62241588866 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 172.0 204.123752495 84% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.476454293629 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 581.4 705.55239521 82% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
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: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.5786872072 57.8364921388 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.5 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.5625 23.324526521 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.5 5.70786347227 61% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.33071574802 0.218282227539 152% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.123297329644 0.0743258471296 166% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0933998773402 0.0701772020484 133% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.174079644756 0.128457276422 136% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0751797143273 0.0628817314937 120% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.23 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.4 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.