"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increasingly more time to covering national news and less time to covering weather and local news. During the same time period, most of the complaints we received from viewers were concerned with the station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, several local businesses that used to run advertisements during our late-night news program have just cancelled 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 the coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
The memorandum suggests the restoration of time devoted to weather and local news to its former level so as to attract more viewers to the program. This is concluded based on complaints in the last one year along with the loss the television station had to face in one last year since advertising contracts got revoked. This conclusion superficially looks persuasive. But, it has some hidden flaws in it which are based on certain assumptions.
First of all, the author has failed to mention the relationship between advertising contracts by local business contractors and restoration of the devoted time to weather and local news. It may be possible that even after restoring the weather and local news time durations to their orignal positions would not affect the advertising time periods. In such a case, since there is no direct relation between the conclusion and advertising stuff, one cannot say that local businesses after the implementation of stated conclusion would again start making contracts with the television station since the business contractors have nothing to do with what is being shown on the televisions station, may it be national news, weather news or local news. This weakens the argument.
Secondly, the author has not clearly mentioned about the complaint sources. Whether they were from a small group of people sending tons of letters again and again has not been mentioned. If this goes true, then the conclusion gets challanged since the survey was improper. If the author provides evidence of the study or a survey based on which he concludes that a vast majority of viewers feel the same concern, then maybe the validity of argument will hold true.
Lastly, the author has not mentioned in what sense were these viewers concerned. Whether they disliked the show, so that these viewers have started looking for other shows, is not clearly mentioned. Maybe they liked the show but were concerned more about some false statements or irrelevant content being stated. If this is the actual cause of concern, then one needs to modify the content of current programs and not show timing weightage itself. In such a case, restoring the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level may really result in a greater number of viewers turning up to the television station.
The argument, as it stands now is considerably flawed, due to its assumption on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to provide justification for the above assumptions, then the validity of the arugument can be assured.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 19 15
No. of Words: 422 350
No. of Characters: 2086 1500
No. of Different Words: 201 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.532 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.943 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.637 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.211 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.935 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.737 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.297 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.525 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.078 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 103, Rule ID: SO_AS_TO[1]
Message: Use simply 'to'
Suggestion: to
...ther and local news to its former level so as to attract more viewers to the program. Th...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, if, lastly, look, may, really, second, secondly, so, then, as to, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2140.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 422.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 5.07109004739 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.53239876712 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7040687124 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 208.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.492890995261 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 654.3 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 76.9127289012 57.8364921388 133% => OK
Chars per sentence: 112.631578947 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.2105263158 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.73684210526 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.274581554505 0.218282227539 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0765891743838 0.0743258471296 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0867588861741 0.0701772020484 124% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.135970657876 0.128457276422 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0920981604312 0.0628817314937 146% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.13 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.1 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => 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
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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.