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 is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In his memo the business manager of televison station proposes to restore the time slots for weather and local news to attract more viewers and to preserve revenues from advertisements on the same level. To support his recommendation, the busness manager brings the viewers concerns about the station's coverage of weather and local news, after the timeslots were readjusted in favor of national news. Also, these changes, according to the maneger, are responsible to the cancellation of advertisement contracts by local businesses. However, despite the evidence, I find the manager's argument logically flawed and inconsistent.
First of all, the manager does not provide a number of viewers complaining about station's coverage of weather and local news before and after the changes. It might be possible that the viewers were concerned with the poor weather forecast and local news before the station decided to increase time for national news. Or, even it might be the case that the number of complaining viewers decreased. Thus, without the knowledge of the statistics and evaluation of the quality and content of the broadcastsing programs it would be hard to conclude, that reallocating timeslots in favor of national news will be a remedy.
Next, the manager attributes the situation with cancellation of advertising contracts by local busunesses to the introduced changes in stations' program. It is true that the businesses care mostly about the time, allocated for their advertisement, the frequency of the advertisements and the audience. However, the businesses wouldn't care too much if their advertisements appear during the national news or local news and weather forecasts. Therefore, there might be a totally different reason for cancellation of advertising contracts. For example, the station might reduced the advertisement frequency during the national news. Since the only late night programs are considered in the memo, it should be no significant change in audience, and thus, decreasing the advertisement time is the most plausible reason. Another reason might be the increase of advertisement fees. Thus, simply giving more time to the weather and local news instead of increasing the number or duration of advertisements or reducing the fees will not restore advertisement revenues.
To conclude, the manager's recommendation appears implausible and might not be effective. To make his proposal more persuasive and substantiate the evidence, the manager needs to include the proper statistics of viewers' complains before and after changes. He also needs to provide some information about whether the introduced changes afected the duration and frequency of advertisements and cost per timeslot. Without this additional information it would be hard to evaluate the success of manager's proposal.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
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.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 433 350
No. of Characters: 2342 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.562 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.409 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.049 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 180 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 158 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 106 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 72 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.65 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.774 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.333 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.5 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.089 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 294, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...r brings the viewers concerns about the stations coverage of weather and local news, aft...
^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 575, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...wever, despite the evidence, I find the managers argument logically flawed and inconsist...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 326, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: wouldn't
...d the audience. However, the businesses wouldnt care too much if their advertisements a...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 429, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... national news or local news and weather forecasts. Therefore, there might be a ...
^^
Line 7, column 18, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...rtisement revenues. To conclude, the managers recommendation appears implausible and ...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, so, therefore, thus, for example, first of all, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 21.0 11.1786427146 188% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2392.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 432.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.53703703704 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55901411391 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.0934380082 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 193.0 204.123752495 95% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.446759259259 0.468620217663 95% => OK
syllable_count: 752.4 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 10.0 4.22255489022 237% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.8121356331 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.6 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.6 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.45 5.70786347227 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
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: 0.317368299293 0.218282227539 145% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.106309868742 0.0743258471296 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0929093355361 0.0701772020484 132% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.202697170066 0.128457276422 158% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0946262074739 0.0628817314937 150% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.85 12.5979740519 118% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.48 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.