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 argument is regarding a memorandum from business manager of a television station claiming that the weather and local news time should be changed to former level. The argument is rife with assumptions and unable to consider the evidence of impact of weather and local news cast and loss of viewers and revenue. The argument is failed to make a cogent case to claim that restoring telecasting time of local and weather news will help to revive the revenue and customers.
First of all, one year time has been considered of telecasting national news for more time and less time of weather and local news during late night telecasting. It may be possible that early decision of television station to increase the time of national news during late night due to preferences of customers in their telecasting area. Few people may like national news, whereas few may prefer to watch local and weather news during day. So the statement regarding the complaints cannot be justified by this much given information.
Since, author mentioned that most of the complaints by the viewers were concerned to weather and local news. It did not take into consideration the sample size of complaints received by the viewers. There is quiet possibility of different viewers' different preferences. The received complaints may be by few viewers who prefer to watch local and weather news during day and they also might be interest ed in watching national news at night.
Thirdly, the author mentioned about the local-businesses who canceled their advertising contracts during late nights. There are different possibilities that can influence this decision as local-businesses cannot afford the late night advertising. It may be possible that small local-businesses feel that late night advertising is not fruitful for their business. They may want to telecast their advertisements during day and choose a station which can provide them affordable advertising rates. The author would have been benefited by providing the supporting evidence of change in decision of local-businesses.
Fourthly, the author considered the problem of loosing customers and revenues due to cancellation of contracts, which is due to less time devoted to local and weather news. There could be other relevant reasons of low viewer rate and loss of revenues which can be considered. It is hard to draw a claim that telecasting the local and weather news as former time level will help to restore the revenue and customers.
Hence, the author's argument can unable to make its valid case to claim that television station should restore its time devoted to weather and local news. This argument lacks the supporting evidence; providing strong
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: 21 15
No. of Words: 436 350
No. of Characters: 2229 1500
No. of Different Words: 172 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.57 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.112 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.837 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 125 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 91 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.762 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.633 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.476 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.597 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.139 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 315, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...s cast and loss of viewers and revenue. The argument is failed to make a cogent cas...
^^^
Line 5, column 382, Rule ID: MANY_NN_U[6]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun may seems to be uncountable; consider using: 'little may'.
Suggestion: little may
... people may like national news, whereas few may prefer to watch local and weather news ...
^^^^^^^
Line 21, column 12, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...revenue and customers. Hence, the authors argument can unable to make its valid c...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, if, may, regarding, so, third, thirdly, whereas, as for, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2286.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 436.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 5.24311926606 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56953094068 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.89049069418 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 184.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.422018348624 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 702.0 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 33.2431432925 57.8364921388 57% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 108.857142857 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.7619047619 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.2380952381 5.70786347227 74% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.428958947484 0.218282227539 197% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.139948280925 0.0743258471296 188% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.114400592477 0.0701772020484 163% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.24002688008 0.128457276422 187% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.100773730204 0.0628817314937 160% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.11 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.6 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 82.0 98.500998004 83% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.