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.
Recently, the business manager of a television station publicized a message, in which he argued that increased coverage of national news and reduced coverage of weather and local news over the past year, led to an increase in viewer complains and reduction in advertising revenues from local businesses. He then proposed that restoring the coverage to its prior form, would help to reverse these losses. Although the business manager's argument may appear valid at first, it is in fact based on many unstated assumptions and faulty logic.
Although most viewer complaints did concern the station's coverage of local and weather news, there is no evidence that the television station's change in airing time had any correlation to these complaints. A thorough analysis of the contents of the complaints, however, would allow station employees to better understand why viewers raised their concerns. If, for example, most of the complaints evidenced frustration towards the reduction in coverage of local and weather news, the business manager's argument would be strengthened.
Another key assumption the manager makes is that the reason local businesses canceled their advertising contracts was due to the change in the station's coverage of the different news categories. However, this would need to be validated; perhaps the best way to do this would be for the television company to ask the local businesses why they chose to cancel their contracts. If their reasons primarily concerned dissatisfaction with the change in coverage, the manager's argument would be made more viable.
The manager also implied that the cancellation of contracts by the local businesses reduced the advertising revenues of the company. Again, this kind of implication needs evidence. It could very well be so that larger contracts etne
Overall, the manager's argument is not convincing in its current form. In order to win support from his audience, the manager needs to gather more evidence, primarily through analysis of complaints and surveys with local businesses. Empowered with this information, the manager would be able to make a more logical argument.
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: 15 15
No. of Words: 336 350
No. of Characters: 1772 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.281 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.274 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.785 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 136 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 119 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 87 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.4 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.131 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.363 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.621 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.087 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 427, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...rse these losses. Although the business managers argument may appear valid at first, it ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 49, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
... most viewer complaints did concern the stations coverage of local and weather news, the...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 493, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...of local and weather news, the business managers argument would be strengthened. An...
^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 144, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
... contracts was due to the change in the stations coverage of the different news categori...
^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 462, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...action with the change in coverage, the managers argument would be made more viable. ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 14, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...larger contracts etne Overall, the managers argument is not convincing in its curre...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, however, if, may, so, then, well, for example, in fact, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 19.6327345309 56% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1822.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 336.0 441.139720559 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.42261904762 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.28139028586 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84550581526 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 175.0 204.123752495 86% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.520833333333 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 561.6 705.55239521 80% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => 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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.7028577686 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.142857143 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.0 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.42857142857 5.70786347227 95% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.267137604013 0.218282227539 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0917473672223 0.0743258471296 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0902772621377 0.0701772020484 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.147967669751 0.128457276422 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0740437588557 0.0628817314937 118% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.1 14.3799401198 112% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.45 12.5979740519 115% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.82 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 98.500998004 86% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 79.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.75 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.