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 examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The manager of the television station argues that the station should expand the coverage of weather and local news in all of its news programs in order to stem the loss of listeners and advertising revenues. This is based on the premises that during last year due to the increased coverage of national news, the station has received complaints from viewers regarding coverage of weather and local news and cessation of business from local businesses occurred. The argument seems fair at first instance, however, on deeper analysis, it becomes clear that certain relevant aspects have not been taken into account, leading to a number of mistaken assumptions and logical flaws.
One such flaw is the questionable assumption that considers cause and effect. In other words, the manager has assumed that cause of increased focus on national issues in past year has effected into the number of complaints from viewers. However, there may be other factors such as increased in frequency of advertising during late hours might have caused the listeners to lose focus on the news and thus, listeners helplessly switched off or changed the station. For example, during late hours, the research on the preference of listeners was conducted in 2002 in five districts of India and it concluded that listeners are not inclined to listen to advertisements during late hours since after the exhaustion of full working day, they intend to listen to only news. In order to strengthen the argument, the manager would need to prove the success of the relationship between increased focus on national news during past year and resultant decline in listeners.
Moreover, the manager’s argument is incorrectly based on the assumption that coverage of local and weather news would increase advertising revenue. In other words, the manager has assumed the analogy between the content on all programs and advertising revenue viable. However, there may be reason to believe that businesses do not prefer to advertise their products or services during the time from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM considering that most of the listeners would be in office, thus busy working. For example, the study conducted by market research firm in 2006 in few cities of India had concluded that listeners percentage is the lowest during this interval of time since 80 percentage of the total potential listeners are not available at home for listening radios. To overcome this flaw, the argument should prove that listeners are available and inclined to listen to radio during the broadcasting of all news programs.
Finally, the manager has assumed also arbitrarily that past year along is sufficient to make such conclusion. In other words, the manager has assumed that the sample of past year is appreciable to notice the fall in listeners and advertising revenues due to the enhanced focus on national news during late hours. However, there may be reason that past year may have not reflected the nuances of assumed change, since past year may be the outlier in the results of the study which showed increase in listeners and business revenues in years preceding to the past year. For example, the study conducted by market consulting firms in 2010 in India has concluded that market tends to fluctuate because of many reasons, thus, one should consider all the causes and their effects on fall in revenue. In this assumption, the manager may find that fall in revenues is the result of new station which has started to broadcast local news during late hours but charging nominal fees from businesses for advertisements, thus, businesses might have switched to the competitors. To render this argument valid, the manager should demonstrate the position of competitors.
While concluding, after close examination of the argument presented, it is apparent that there are several logical flaws in the manager’s attempt to demonstrate the fall in revenues and listeners’ complaints due to the increased attention on national news. The recommendations in the above paragraphs show how the argument may be strengthened and made more logically sound.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
better not to use external examples.
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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: 21 15
No. of Words: 668 350
No. of Characters: 3371 1500
No. of Different Words: 258 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.084 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.046 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.664 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 246 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 202 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 140 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 88 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.81 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.274 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.762 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.533 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.105 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 609, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'listeners'' or 'listener's'?
Suggestion: listeners'; listener's
... few cities of India had concluded that listeners percentage is the lowest during this in...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, may, moreover, regarding, so, then, thus, while, for example, such as, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 131.0 55.5748502994 236% => Less preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3459.0 2260.96107784 153% => OK
No of words: 666.0 441.139720559 151% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.19369369369 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.08005667302 4.56307096286 111% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.77334481113 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 269.0 204.123752495 132% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.403903903904 0.468620217663 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1065.6 705.55239521 151% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 16.0 8.76447105788 183% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 11.0 4.22255489022 261% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 31.0 22.8473053892 136% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 64.4822392886 57.8364921388 111% => OK
Chars per sentence: 164.714285714 119.503703932 138% => OK
Words per sentence: 31.7142857143 23.324526521 136% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.7619047619 5.70786347227 101% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.337179750264 0.218282227539 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.115392836233 0.0743258471296 155% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0906034010355 0.0701772020484 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.210584785518 0.128457276422 164% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.081562069144 0.0628817314937 130% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.9 14.3799401198 131% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.01 48.3550499002 83% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.4 12.197005988 126% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.41 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.45 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 138.0 98.500998004 140% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.4 11.1389221557 129% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.