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.
According to the business manager of a television station, the time devoted to weather and local news should be restored, so as to increase their number of viewers and prevent loss of advertising revenue. Although the managers' reason for coming to this conclusion might seem logical, there are crucial evidences that needs to be mentioned to make this argument concrete and reasonable.
First of all, the manager mentions that the local businesses that used to advertise during the late night news have canceled their contract with them. He/she suggests that this is because the time devoted to the local and weather news has reduced. However , there could be other factors that were not mentioned. The businesses could have pulled out due to lack of funds, ineffectiveness of the advertisements bringing in new customers, or the businesses having a new target audience that do not follow the late night news. The manager should rule out all these other possibilities before coming to the conclusion of reduced time being the cause of reduced advertising revenues.
Secondly, the manager says that viewers complained about the coverage of weather and local news. What were the complaints about specifically? Was it about the reduced time? Or was it about news being false? Or was it about the attitude of the reporters of the program? There could be a million other reason for the complaints by the viewers, but the manager assumed it was because of the shortened time. The reason for the complaints should be mentioned to be majorly on the reduced program length to strengthen the managers' argument.
Finally, there is no evidence showing that restoring the time meant for weather and local news will increase the number of viewers. The memorandum does not state that the number of viewers reduced over the past year. It just states that there were complaints, which could be due to different reasons as mentioned above. Also, there is no evidence showing that these complaints were not present before the change in time dedicated to the local and weather news.
In sum, the argument needs to be accompanied with more evidence to make it a reasonable one. There is no guarantee that restoring the time for these programs will prevent the loss of advertising revenues and increase viewers.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 381 350
No. of Characters: 1871 1500
No. of Different Words: 158 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.418 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.911 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.574 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 110 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.05 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.194 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.35 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.329 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.55 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.119 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 123, Rule ID: SO_AS_TO[1]
Message: Use simply 'to'
Suggestion: to
...ther and local news should be restored, so as to increase their number of viewers and pr...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 256, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...al and weather news has reduced. However , there could be other factors that were ...
^^
Line 9, column 518, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...educed program length to strengthen the managers argument. Finally, there is no evi...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, as to, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1929.0 2260.96107784 85% => OK
No of words: 380.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.07631578947 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41515443553 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63531438158 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 165.0 204.123752495 81% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.434210526316 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 600.3 705.55239521 85% => 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: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 51.2865479439 57.8364921388 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 96.45 119.503703932 81% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.0 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.35 5.70786347227 76% => 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 : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.327778323485 0.218282227539 150% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.108450928597 0.0743258471296 146% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0908244698402 0.0701772020484 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.189278368243 0.128457276422 147% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0733155461547 0.0628817314937 117% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.0 14.3799401198 83% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.18 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.61 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 73.0 98.500998004 74% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.