The following is a memorandum from the business 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 time 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 just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In the given argument, the business manager of a television station states that, in order to increase their viewership and avoid losing money, they should increase the time devoted to weather and local news. I will be discussing why doing this might not be the right thing to do, with the given data.
It is stated that during the past 1 year, most of the complaints received from viewers were about the station's coverage of weather and local news. Although, this point does not mention how many viewers complained about the news. What were the complaints about? The complaints might be about some technical glitches that happened during the news feed and might not be related to the news content that was being shown.
Furthermore, the argument also states that local businesses that used to advertise during their late-night programs have canceled their contracts with them. Even though this might be a major loss for the news company, the argument nowhere mentions that the broadcasting of weather and local news was the major cause of this. Did the news channel try to find out from the advertisers why they pulled out? Do they know the actual reason behind the local business stopping the advertisements on their channel? It might be that the businesses started running well, thus they did not feel the need to advertise further.
Finally, the suggestion made by the business manager is that they should increase the time devoted to weather and local news to its initial level to attract more viewers and avoid losing any further revenues. What is the guarantee that this will be beneficial for them? The argument does not mention the count of people that are interested in weather and local news anywhere. Was there any survey conducted on this? If there are no interested viewers for this category as well, there will be simply no change in the viewership and revenues of the news firm even after working on the suggested changes by the business manager.
Thus, in conclusion, I would like to say that the news firm should first try to gauge how many viewers are actually interested in their weather and local news. According to that data, they should make an informed decision whether to change the content broadcasted on their news channel, or make any other hanges.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 388 350
No. of Characters: 1852 1500
No. of Different Words: 174 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.438 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.773 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.358 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 118 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 95 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 31 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.556 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.227 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.278 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.562 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.086 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 103, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...ts received from viewers were about the stations coverage of weather and local news. Alt...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 148, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Although” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...ons coverage of weather and local news. Although, this point does not mention how many v...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, finally, first, furthermore, if, so, thus, well, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => 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: 1900.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 388.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.89690721649 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.43821085614 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.39625864188 2.78398813304 86% => OK
Unique words: 183.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.471649484536 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 564.3 705.55239521 80% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.5502373511 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.555555556 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5555555556 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.33333333333 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => 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: 0.350273634584 0.218282227539 160% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.114507247671 0.0743258471296 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0865237572606 0.0701772020484 123% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.202560339194 0.128457276422 158% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0399764531147 0.0628817314937 64% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.4 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.14 12.5979740519 88% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.69 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 74.0 98.500998004 75% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.