'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 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.”
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence would be needed in order to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
There are several issues with the argument in the statement some of which is discussed here. The business manager states that the complaints received where related to the coverage of weather and local news. There is no information available on the contents of these complaints, therefore, there is a good possibility that people are complaining about the poor quality of the local news and weather coverage rather than their length. If only an insight was given on the contents of these complaints the argument could be strengthened.
It is mentioned by the business manager that local businesses have canceled their advertising contacts. There is no information available on why they have done so and the business manager has related this to the decrease in length of the local news. This argument is weakly supported since there is no evidence provided by the business manager. The local businesses could have canceled their advertisements because of poor coverage of the local news since local viewers, who are their customers, were no more interested in this television station.
On the other hand, it is mentioned that the programme is a late night news programme. It is highly unlikely for a person to be interested in the weather forecast at that time. They are usually interested to know about the weather early morning rather than late night. There is also no reference to when the news programme is aired, hence it might be aired at a very late time and people are complaining about the time of the programme.
We should also consider the fact that the decrease in advertisement contracts and audience could be related to the activities of a rival television station, which airs much more interesting programmes during the late-night news programme. People might be more interested in a drama series at late time of the day instead of the news. As a result, all problems at hand cannot be attributed to the length of the weather and local news coverage.
In conclusion, more information and evidence is required to come to the conclusions stated. For example, the stations can conduct a survey to know what genre of programmes viewers are more interested to watch and at what time. They can provide more information about the complaints received and act accordingly to satisfy their viewers. The TV station can also look for national businesses interested in advertising through them since they are covering the national news as well.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.0 out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 407 350
No. of Characters: 2005 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.492 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.926 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.726 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 115 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.421 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.235 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.579 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.574 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.118 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 340, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...ther coverage rather than their length. If only an insight was given on the conten...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, also, but, hence, if, look, so, then, therefore, well, for example, in conclusion, as a result, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2046.0 2260.96107784 90% => OK
No of words: 407.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.02702702703 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.49157444576 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.78421204562 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 173.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.425061425061 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 657.9 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.5282805015 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.684210526 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.4210526316 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.63157894737 5.70786347227 116% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.298060817625 0.218282227539 137% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.101289278547 0.0743258471296 136% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.065168448264 0.0701772020484 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.148348020435 0.128457276422 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0800228580634 0.0628817314937 127% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.0 14.3799401198 90% => 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: 11.89 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.63 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => 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: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.