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.
From the memorandum of the manager, it is not clear what are the specifics of the complaints of the viewers regarding the coverage of weather and local news. Are these complaints related to the particular program i.e., the late-night news? Perhaps, the complaints are concerning the overall coverage by the TV station throughout the day. In that case, restoring the weather and local news level to the former level will not help the TV station to attract additional viewers.
Although the complaints regarding weather and local news have been grouped together, they may have many differing or even conflicting issues. For example, if there is not any emergency weather situation, there may not be any demand for the extended coverage of weather. Perhaps, the TV station did not cover the previous weather emergencies adequately and that is the cause of the viewers' complaints regarding the weather news. If that is the issue, mere restoration of previous level of weather news cannot attract additional viewers. Similar can be said about the local news.
Moreover, the manager failed to find out and mention the reasons of the withdrawal of the advertisement by the local businesses. Was it the decreased level of local and weather news that motivated the local businesses to cancel their advertising contracts with the TV station? Or, was it the overall quality of the late-night news program that fail to attract sufficient viewers, and hence, the local businesses also lost interst to sponsor the program? There may be additional issues of conflict of business interests with the contents of the late-night news program.
Additionally, the late-night news program may lose its viewers because people may use another sources, for example online news portals and communication websites to read or watch the news during the time of air of the program. As a result, the advertisers have diverted their attention to those sources to spend their adversting budget more effectively.
Considering all these issues, stating only the complaints of the viewers and the cancellation of the advertising contracts are not sufficient evidence for the restoratioon of the former level of weather and local news during the late-night news program. Rather, extensive survey, interviews and consultations with the stakeholders i.e., the viewers and the advertising businesses, are necessary to find out the causes of viewers' complaints and the decrease of advertising revenues and therefore, develop the startegy to attract more viewers and increase the advertising revenues.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 17 15
No. of Words: 407 350
No. of Characters: 2108 1500
No. of Different Words: 168 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.492 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.179 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.834 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 160 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 142 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.941 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.564 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.397 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.599 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.137 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 265, Rule ID: PROGRESSIVE_VERBS[1]
Message: This verb is normally not used in the progressive form. Try a simple form instead.
...ate-night news? Perhaps, the complaints are concerning the overall coverage by the TV station ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 104, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...s of the withdrawal of the advertisement by the local businesses. Was it the decr...
^^
Line 9, column 151, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...e local businesses. Was it the decreased level of local and weather news that mot...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, hence, if, may, moreover, regarding, so, therefore, for example, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2175.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 405.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.37037037037 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.48604634366 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87208789714 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 178.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.43950617284 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 657.0 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 65.1704711616 57.8364921388 113% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.941176471 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.8235294118 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.82352941176 5.70786347227 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.28523446481 0.218282227539 131% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.106895278591 0.0743258471296 144% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0645796888749 0.0701772020484 92% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.172668017796 0.128457276422 134% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.042229316137 0.0628817314937 67% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.16 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.64 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
---------------------
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.