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 states that since they are now more inclined to broadcast national news and have lessened the time for local news as well as weather news, they have been getting more complaints and losing contracts from local businesses. The manager, therefore, argues that in order to get the attention of more viewers and to ensure their advertising revenues, the station must increase the time devoted to local news and weather news to its original level. While this argument may seem very unimpeachable in the beginning, there are some important things the manager may have missed and did not account for during making the decision.
At first, it is more plausible that if the TV station allocates more time for national news program, they would eventually be attracting more viewers since people from all around the nation will be watching national news. Local news will be more likely to be viewed by the people around that particular locality and people from a far apart location will certainly not be interested to know what is going to with a different locality. In this scenario, the argument made by the manager lacks sufficient evidence and logic; broadcasting national news should increase the number of viewers rather than diminishing it. However, if the people of that locality are very much conservative which we cannot know from the manager's statement, and they might react furiously for the fact that their local news time is decreased, then maybe, local news and weather broadcasting time should not be narrowed down.
Secondly, the manager tells that because of decreasing the local news time, local businesses have withdrawn their advertising contracts. Therefore, restoring the duration of local news to original level should help them make up for the revenues they have been losing. However, when the station broadcasts national news, they will be able to grasp the attention of the national and even the multinational companies. It can be easily justified and argued that those companies will be offering more profitable contracts for the TV stations than the local businesses. As a result, even though the station will be losing local contracts, they will be receiving more and more lucrative contracts from the national and global businesses. And these contracts will eventually increase the profit margin of the TV station.
So, it can be stated with sufficient logic and reason that the argument posited by the manager lacks necessary information to consider it as the possible remedy of the problem the station is currently facing.
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: 14 15
No. of Words: 421 350
No. of Characters: 2125 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.53 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.048 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.548 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 153 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 30.071 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.346 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.413 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.595 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.156 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 713, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...servative which we cannot know from the managers statement, and they might react furious...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, well, while, as a result, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2177.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 421.0 441.139720559 95% => OK
Chars per words: 5.17102137767 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.52971130743 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61689814489 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 194.0 204.123752495 95% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.46080760095 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 670.5 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => 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: 30.0 22.8473053892 131% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 52.3360413529 57.8364921388 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 155.5 119.503703932 130% => OK
Words per sentence: 30.0714285714 23.324526521 129% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.14285714286 5.70786347227 125% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
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: 0.327390676494 0.218282227539 150% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.138826664432 0.0743258471296 187% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0883994001802 0.0701772020484 126% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.210405947061 0.128457276422 164% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.113389942269 0.0628817314937 180% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.0 14.3799401198 125% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.03 48.3550499002 85% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 12.197005988 123% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.3 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.54 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 91.0 98.500998004 92% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.5 12.3882235529 149% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.0 11.1389221557 126% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.