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 discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In the memorandum from the business manager of a television station, it is stated that in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid lossing any further advertising revenues, they should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. The author has come to this conclusion based on the increase that the program gives to national news in reduction to the time given to weather and local news, in addition to some complains and the cancelation of advertising contracts. However, it is necessary theer specif evidences to evaluate the argument properly.
To begin, the first needed evidence is to know if the quality of weather and local news have decreased or not. They have received complains about the coverge of such news. But a good coverage can be done with less time and better quality. If they increase the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level, they could receive complains too. Because more time is not a guarrante of a better coverage. Moreover, such complains could be solve with a survey asking to the public how many time they want to dedicate to weather and local news. If the survey showed that the quality is poor, then the author's argument would be weakened.
Socondly, the next needed evidence is to know why some businesses have canceled their advertising contracts. The author is falling in the fallacy of believe that because the program's format has changed, then companies wanted to stop their advertising contracts. But there could be more resons for that. For instance, those companies maybe have changed their advertising policy and now they are making contracts with social networks such as Facebook or Twitter to put their ads there. Another alternative explanation could be that those companies are dealing with financial problems so they had to reduce cost and cancel some advertising contracts. If this was the case, restore to the former level of time dedicated to weather and local news would not solve the problem and the author's argument would be weakened.
Thirdly, the last needed evidence is to know if there is another idea that could bring more televidents. The author is saying that it is enough just with the return to the previous program's format. But, suppose that the public's preferences have changed and now they want more information about sports or economics. Moreover, even giving such news, the journalist's quality is also importany. What if the current journalists have not the enough knowledge of how transmit the new kind of information related to national news. If this was true, the author's argument would also be weakened.
To conclude, the argument, as it stands now, is considerable flawed because the author is relying on many unstated assumptions. If the author is able to provide the three needed evidences mentioned above, a proper evaluation of the argument could be done.
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: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 485 350
No. of Characters: 2368 1500
No. of Different Words: 206 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.693 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.882 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.514 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.208 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.183 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.305 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.491 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.051 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 355, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Because” 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.
...evel, they could receive complains too. Because more time is not a guarrante of a bette...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 493, Rule ID: MANY_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun time seems to be countable; consider using: 'many times'.
Suggestion: many times
... with a survey asking to the public how many time they want to dedicate to weather and lo...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 608, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...owed that the quality is poor, then the authors argument would be weakened. Socondly...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 779, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ews would not solve the problem and the authors argument would be weakened. Thirdly...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 546, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...to national news. If this was true, the authors argument would also be weakened. To...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, third, thirdly, for instance, in addition, kind of, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2422.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 485.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 4.99381443299 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69283662038 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56874780763 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 213.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.439175257732 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 759.6 705.55239521 108% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.4571537745 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 100.916666667 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2083333333 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.79166666667 5.70786347227 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
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: 0.249143622456 0.218282227539 114% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0755418875645 0.0743258471296 102% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0921108629023 0.0701772020484 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.155098096654 0.128457276422 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.134892068447 0.0628817314937 215% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.2 14.3799401198 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.66 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.11 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 107.0 98.500998004 109% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.0 12.3882235529 153% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.