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.
The author states that the national news contributes to a major chunk of the late-night news program and the weather and local news contribute lesser. The author fails to prove his position lucidly as he doesn't provide enough substantial evidence to justify the restoration of the time devoted to the weather and local news to its former level.
The author mentions that the complaints received from viewers are concerned with the station's coverage of weather and local news. Nature and the type of complaints have not been mentioned by the author which leads to the assumption that either the local news are not effective enough or the weather approximations aren't accurate enough. If these complaints are looked into and addressed immediately then the original time slots can still be maintained.
This can be done by covering the local news that is more important than the ones which are not necessary to be telecast at all. The weather accuracy can also be enhanced by gathering information from more reliable sources for example, directly from the meteorological department of that region.
The cancellation of the advertising contracts by the local businesses and their reasons have also not been clearly stated by the author. This can be because of higher rates of advertisements in the late-night slot than the other slots during the day time. The other reasons might include lower rates for advertisements from other news channels in the same vicinity, advertisements failing to target the right pool of people or issues in the time slot it is being telecast.
There should be surveys conducted in the belonging local area amongst the residents in the radius in which the late-night show is telecast so that a clear reason might be obtained. This might be done before the restoration is implemented.
Even if the restoration of the time belonging to weather and local news to its former level is implemented it is still uncertain that there will be an increase in the number of viewers in the late-night slot and increase in advertising revenue if the root causes and other plausible reasons are failed to address. Hence, the author leaves the readers unconvinced due to the flaws present in the argument.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 370 350
No. of Characters: 1826 1500
No. of Different Words: 173 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.386 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.935 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.74 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 126 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 95 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 67 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.429 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.907 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.429 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.375 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.626 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.131 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 205, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...ils to prove his position lucidly as he doesnt provide enough substantial evidence to ...
^^^^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
... and local news to its former level. The author mentions that the complaints rec...
^^^
Line 3, column 86, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...ved from viewers are concerned with the stations coverage of weather and local news. Nat...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 315, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: aren't
...ve enough or the weather approximations arent accurate enough. If these complaints ar...
^^^^^
Line 13, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...the flaws present in the argument.
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, hence, if, look, so, still, then, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1866.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 368.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.07065217391 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37987740619 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76428558781 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 176.0 204.123752495 86% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.478260869565 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 580.5 705.55239521 82% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => 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: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.9869507622 57.8364921388 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 133.285714286 119.503703932 112% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.2857142857 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.0 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.302989226441 0.218282227539 139% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.111034556437 0.0743258471296 149% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0799516690538 0.0701772020484 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.164788752285 0.128457276422 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.085262997578 0.0628817314937 136% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.42 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.96 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.