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 further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level.”
The business manager of the television station makes two claims. First, to attract more viewers, the television station should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. The manager supports this claim by stating that most of the viewer’s complaints were concerned with the station’s coverage of weather and local news. Second, to avoid losing further revenues from advertising the station should again restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. The manager supports this claims by stating that local businesses used to advertise during their late-night news program. Close scrutiny of these claims make them somewhat unsubstantial.
First, to attract more viewers, the manager claims that the television station should restore the time devoted to weather and local news on the basis of the fact that most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with station’s coverage of weather and local news. However, it could be that the complaints received from the viewers on the station’s coverage of weather and local news were concerned with the quality of the news rather than the time devoted on coverage. Or, maybe it could have been that the weather updates presented on television station were inaccurate and also the weather forecasts were often found to be wrongly predicted. Also, it could have been that the local news presented on the news program were found to be too much sensational that made the viewers uninterested in watching them. Or, it could have been that the local news presented on the television were found to be less interesting to the viewers. Any of the above could have been the reason for the loss of viewership of the television station. Additionally, it could also have been that the quality of the national news was not at par with the expectations of the viewers that resulted in a decrease in viewership of the television station.
Second, to avoid further losing revenues from advertising the station should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level on the basis of the fact that local businesses which used to advertise during their late-night news program canceled their advertising contracts with them. However, there could have been many other reasons for cancellation of the advertising contracts. Maybe, it could have been that the local businesses were facing shortage of funds and in order to reduce their expenditures, they decided to curtail the costs involved in those expensive television advertisements. Also, it could have been that the local business had established a huge market for their products and no longer felt necessary to advertise their products on television. Or, it could have been that the television station eventually decreased the time allocated for advertisements on their late-night news program in order to present more national news due to which local businesses found it meaningless to renew their advertising contracts with them.
All these claims rest on a certain number of doubtful assumptions. First, the complaints of viewers received were concerned with the time allocated for the station’s coverage of weather and local news. Second, local businesses preferred local news programs instead of national news programs to advertise their products. Third, by simply restoring the time of weather and local news coverage to its former level, the viewers of television will increase.
In sum, the claims made by the business manager are relying on doubtful assumptions that make them unconvincing. To bolster these claims the manager must verify whether less time allocated to weather and local news coverage is the only reason for the loss of viewership of the television station and cancellation of advertising contracts by local businesses. Proper verification will provide a strong hold on the claims made by the manager.
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: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 627 350
No. of Characters: 3218 1500
No. of Different Words: 182 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.004 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.132 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.641 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 227 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 192 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 119 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 82 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.08 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.881 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.52 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.416 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.58 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.218 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 637, Rule ID: CLOSE_SCRUTINY[1]
Message: Use simply 'scrutiny'.
Suggestion: Scrutiny
...e during their late-night news program. Close scrutiny of these claims make them somewhat unsu...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, however, if, may, second, so, third
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 50.0 28.8173652695 174% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 94.0 55.5748502994 169% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3307.0 2260.96107784 146% => OK
No of words: 627.0 441.139720559 142% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.27432216906 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.00399520894 4.56307096286 110% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.78242818427 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 196.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.312599681021 0.468620217663 67% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1013.4 705.55239521 144% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.5661927298 57.8364921388 117% => OK
Chars per sentence: 132.28 119.503703932 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.08 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.92 5.70786347227 34% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.422845787869 0.218282227539 194% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.162266019423 0.0743258471296 218% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.11534184706 0.0701772020484 164% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.301622446372 0.128457276422 235% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0827847453054 0.0628817314937 132% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.9 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.58 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.34 8.32208582834 88% => OK
difficult_words: 98.0 98.500998004 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.