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 business manager of a television station claims that to attract more viewers to their late-night news program, they must restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. This claim can be an outcome of below reason.
The revenue of a television station hugely depends on the number of viewers to its programs. As such, when the number of viewers decreased over the past year due to increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news, then it must surely have caused concern to the business manager.
However, specific evidences are required to evaluate this argument as they would lead to varying the claim of the author. Firstly, the author does not mention the number of viewers who complained against the new schedule. If this number was very small, then there is no guarantee of improving the revenue by restoring the previous schedule.
Moreover, no reason is being mentioned as to why multiple local businesses canceled their advertising contracts with them. If the reason was purely based on the dwindling needs of their products, then there seems no reason for them to continue with their earlier contracts as it would hamper the revenue of local businesss if not the television station.
The author needs to provide statistical evidence as to how many viewers were fond of the station's coverage of weather and local news. Unless this number is made available, there seems to be no point in speculating the impact of switching to the new schedule on the revenue of television station. In addition to this, local businesses need to mention in their feedback as to the reason they canceled their advertising contract.
Therefore, the author needs to specify clearly all these evidences in order to strengthen his claim of restoring older schedule of covering weather and local news. If the assumptions prove unwarranted, then the author has to switch to the new schedule of increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news.
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: 337 350
No. of Characters: 1634 1500
No. of Different Words: 154 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.285 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.849 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.491 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 122 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 97 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 33 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.071 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.489 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.381 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.678 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.102 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 17, column 90, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...as to how many viewers were fond of the stations coverage of weather and local news. Unl...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, however, if, moreover, so, then, therefore, as to, in addition
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 10.0 19.6327345309 51% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 3.0 13.6137724551 22% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1692.0 2260.96107784 75% => OK
No of words: 337.0 441.139720559 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.02077151335 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.28457229495 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.55154230736 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 158.0 204.123752495 77% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.46884272997 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 513.0 705.55239521 73% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => 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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.6515841225 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.857142857 119.503703932 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.0714285714 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.57142857143 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => 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: 0.338533189105 0.218282227539 155% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.12353923429 0.0743258471296 166% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.136368030765 0.0701772020484 194% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.200627039199 0.128457276422 156% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.129791522595 0.0628817314937 206% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.13 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.39 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 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.