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.
In the given memorandum, it is stated that the coverage of weather and local news time should be restored to achieve more viewers and to avoid losing advertising revenues. The business manager has come to this conclusion is based on the increased coverage time of the national news, the number of complaints related to the weather and local news from viewers and the withdrawal of the advertising contracts. However, before this conclusion can be properly evaluated, two questions must be answered.
First of all, the arguments assumes that the increased time of national news has an effect on the complaints received regarding weather and local news. It is possible that the complaints are realted the content that they are telecasting. May be the weather reports that are being shown on the news are not accurate or may be the local news is not giving updated city news to the viewers. It might not be necessarily true that the complaints recieved are due the increased coverage of the national news. If either of these cases regarding local and weather news have merit, then the statement doesn't hold water.
Second assumption is that the withdrawal of the advertising contracts is happening because of the less time coverage to local news in the late-night news program. This might not be reason. May be there's a new television channel has come into picture which offers the advertising service at a minimal price or may be the owners of the advertisement company have realised that the local news of this channel is not reaching people as much as they want to. If either of the above is true, the argument is significantly weakened.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If we have answers to the above three questions, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the concluison to restore the time allocated to weather and local news to its former level.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 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: 334 350
No. of Characters: 1606 1500
No. of Different Words: 152 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.275 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.808 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.684 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 111 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 94 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.857 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.376 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.643 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.381 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.569 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.083 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 243, Rule ID: HE_VERB_AGR[8]
Message: The proper name in singular (May) must be used with a third-person verb: 'is'.
Suggestion: is
... content that they are telecasting. May be the weather reports that are being show...
^^
Line 5, column 593, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...her news have merit, then the statement doesnt hold water. Second assumption is...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 612, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
..., then the statement doesnt hold water. Second assumption is that the withdrawal...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 197, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: there's
...ogram. This might not be reason. May be theres a new television channel has come into ...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, may, regarding, second, so, then, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1651.0 2260.96107784 73% => OK
No of words: 333.0 441.139720559 75% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.95795795796 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.27180144563 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74289763779 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 155.0 204.123752495 76% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.465465465465 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 518.4 705.55239521 73% => 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: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
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: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.7582419988 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.928571429 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.7857142857 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.78571428571 5.70786347227 101% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.361083916384 0.218282227539 165% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.136968600529 0.0743258471296 184% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.119686659835 0.0701772020484 171% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.228042578478 0.128457276422 178% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0765307527014 0.0628817314937 122% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => 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: 11.78 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.43 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.