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.
From the memorandum given we can see that the business manager asserts that the television station should expand new coverage of weather and local news for the purpose of rising the viewership rating as well as eschewing the loss in advertising income. This allegation is wildly based on the assumption that complaints received from viewers and the rescindment of advertising contracts resulted from the cut of weather and local news, as well as the presumption that the resurgence of such news would bring in more viewers and curb the loss in advertisement revenues. Such assumptions are consequential and inconclusive, which means that they are likely erroneous given different scenarios.
First and foremost, querulous viewers that are concerned about the station's coverage of weather and local news are of no doubt still viewers of the station. This means that such a proportion of viewers already exist in the equation, and underscoring the coverage on weather and local news, and hence stating the desires of pre-existing viewers, does not in any case imply that the number of viewers will rise. What the business manager should consider is the demographic that does not already tune in to the station. If attraction of additional viewers is truly an opbjective, then the television station should expand on facets that may intrigue non-viewers. Should the taste of these people match with weather and local coverage, then viewership is likely to rise. However, if the alignment is not desireable, then the station may actually lose money given how additional funds would certainly be required for making such an alteration.
Equally noteworthy is the unstable logic behind the second assumption, where the business manager assumes that local businesses revoke their advertisement contracts is based on the decline in weather and local coverage. Although these two events seem to have a certain relationship to them, outright asserting that they have a causal relationship is specious. The decision for local businesses to stop advertising could be a result from a wide number of other factors. Examples of such include the cost of advertising, the undesirable viewership at night (which has been inferred from the previous paragraph to not necessarily improve if the station raise the coverage on weather and local news) as well as changes in preference of customers from local businesses. Such a variety of variables could all factor in to how the decision to stop cooperating with the television station culminated. Since it cannot be proven that cutting down on weather and local news is responsible for the loss in advertisement revenues, it is inappropriate to allege that bringing back such news coverage would magically resuscitate advertisement contracts.
By way of conclusion I would like to restate that the assumptions made by the business manager are spurious. This would render his argument to rejuvinate coverage on weather and local news useless and possibly costly. From the aforementioned points it has been clearly stated that viewership can only rise if the tastes of non-viewers are considered. What's more, the relationship between the decrease of weather and local news and the termination of advertisement contracts are not proven to be causal. These two statements could imply that the assumptions made are unwarranted, and the television station would burden a transitional cost of expanding weather and local news that cannot be compensated by the non-existent expected revenues.
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 556 350
No. of Characters: 2918 1500
No. of Different Words: 237 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.856 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.248 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.904 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 176 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 124 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 86 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.8 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.694 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.354 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.508 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.07 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 68, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...us viewers that are concerned about the stations coverage of weather and local news are ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Equally,
...red for making such an alteration. Equally noteworthy is the unstable logic behind...
^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 352, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: What's
...e tastes of non-viewers are considered. Whats more, the relationship between the decr...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, first, hence, however, if, may, second, still, then, well, no doubt, such as, as well as, in any case
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 21.0 13.6137724551 154% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2970.0 2260.96107784 131% => OK
No of words: 556.0 441.139720559 126% => OK
Chars per words: 5.34172661871 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.85588840946 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.96950670724 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 244.0 204.123752495 120% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.438848920863 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 923.4 705.55239521 131% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 66.7326007286 57.8364921388 115% => OK
Chars per sentence: 148.5 119.503703932 124% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.8 23.324526521 119% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.55 5.70786347227 97% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.264028740502 0.218282227539 121% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0917659024227 0.0743258471296 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0606418153197 0.0701772020484 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.19145359613 0.128457276422 149% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0254291504434 0.0628817314937 40% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.6 14.3799401198 122% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 35.61 48.3550499002 74% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 12.197005988 123% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.99 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.72 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 132.0 98.500998004 134% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.5 12.3882235529 157% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 20.0 11.9071856287 168% => 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.