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 argument is well presented yet far-fetched. It lays a claim that to attract viewers and avoid losing any further advertising, the television station should expand the coverage of weather and local news on all new programs. Nevertheless, due to several flaws after close scrutiny, the argument has some assumptions which need to support to make the statement more convincing.
First of all, a problem arises in this argument that most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with weather and local news when the station decreases time to them. However, his contention is open to a number of assumptions. For example, Does all complaints are all complaining about the decrease of the weather and local news programs? Perhaps, they are arguing that those two programs are still too long, or the qualities are much worse than before, but not because of the decrease. Besides, How many complaints do the station receive? If they just get some complaints, I believe it is very normal, which means every program always has some people who do not like it. Hence, without accounting for and ruling out other likely assumptions, by no means could the author contend that the reduction of the time of the weather and local news is definitely hurting the television station.
In addition, even though the writer may be able to provide us with enough information to infer a solution to the above problem, this argument is still ill-conceived. Another problem is that the writer says that advertising is reducing because of the decision they made. It may be possible local businesses cut their contracts because the television situation, but it is entirely possible that they are not cutting the contracts due to the weather and local news programs. Maybe the whole viewers are dropping quickly in recent years, so the companies cancel the contracts. Moreover, the writer does not state any information about how many numbers of advertising cancel their programs. If there are only two or three, it is actually no big deal. In order to confirm his point of view, the writer should pay close heed to as well as address the representative probability mentioned above. Only real situations and the real numbers are the keys to bolstering his advice.
Ultimately, even if the previous assumptions might turn out to be supported by subsequently detained illustration, a crucial problem remains that the recommendation tries to convince the readers that the station should expand the weather and local news programs on all new programs to attract viewers. But this is meaningless since the article does not explain the relationship between these two programs and increasing viewers. In this light, it is reasonable to cast doubts upon presumption which made by the author because presumption actually is inadequate in whether the weather and local news could really draw viewers. Maybe, abandoning all these two programs are just the audiences wanting. Pursuing this reasoning proves that the author has the responsibility to carefully consider his assumptions and then provide cogent evidence to pave the way for a more reliable argument.
In hindsight, it seems precipitous for the writer to make the summary based on a sequence of problematic premises. The argument turns out rather too many unsupported assumptions, most of them rooted in a rather narrow slice. As such, it cannot bear the weight of the assertion that the recommendation is a good idea.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 26 15
No. of Words: 566 350
No. of Characters: 2834 1500
No. of Different Words: 271 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.878 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.007 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.732 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 204 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 166 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 106 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.769 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.233 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.731 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.273 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.463 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.054 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 270, Rule ID: CLOSE_SCRUTINY[1]
Message: Use simply 'scrutiny'.
Suggestion: scrutiny
...evertheless, due to several flaws after close scrutiny, the argument has some assumptions whic...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, besides, but, first, hence, however, if, may, moreover, nevertheless, really, so, still, then, well, for example, in addition, as well as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2904.0 2260.96107784 128% => OK
No of words: 566.0 441.139720559 128% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13074204947 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.87757670434 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8246944039 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 278.0 204.123752495 136% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.491166077739 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 884.7 705.55239521 125% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.5154104013 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.692307692 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7692307692 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.19230769231 5.70786347227 108% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 18.0 6.88822355289 261% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.222625396782 0.218282227539 102% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0525508070652 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.068937190273 0.0701772020484 98% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.114951772425 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0745302446955 0.0628817314937 119% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.47 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.25 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 128.0 98.500998004 130% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.