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 business manager of the television station suggests that the weather and local news be allotted more time in the late-night news program. He supports his argument based on the recent complaints received from viewers and the recent trends of cancelled advertising contracts. However, the argument fails to hold water as it does not answer several important questions and makes many unstated assumptions.
The business manager mentions that a large portion of complaints received in the last year were concerned with the coverage of weather and local news, but fails to mention what aspect of the current news coverage was the point of concern for the viewers. It could be possible that the viewers opined that the current coverage is superfluous. They might have wished that the weather and local news be not shown at all in the late-night news program. The complaints might have been about the coverage being not detailed enough. Unless the nature of the complaints is known, one cannot conclude that the viewers prefer to have more time devoted to the weather and local news in the said program. If they did prefer more weather and local news in the late-night program, the manager's argument would be strengthened.
Another supporting point for the manager's argument is the cancellation of advertising contracts in the late-night news program. However, there is no evidence presented that correlates the cancellation of advertising contracts with the increased time to national news. The local businesses might have cancelled their contracts for numerous other reasons. There might have been other external factors like, change in the economy, that could have led to these cancellations. The reason for the cancellation of contracts needs to be known to determine if the increased national news coverage in this time period had an affect on the cancellation. If the contracts were cancelled due to the increased time for national news coverage, then the manager would be right in suggesting to increase the coverage for weather and local news.
The business manager posits that the change in the proportions of national, and weather and local news during the late-night news program is the cause for the cancellation of contracts and the complaints from viewers - which cannot be considered as a valid supporting statement unless the above questions are answered. If it was indeed the cause, the argument would be valid.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 392 350
No. of Characters: 2004 1500
No. of Different Words: 155 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.45 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.112 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.664 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 145 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.059 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.513 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.412 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.402 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.562 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.162 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 772, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...cal news in the late-night program, the managers argument would be strengthened. Anot...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 34, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...ed. Another supporting point for the managers argument is the cancellation of adverti...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 616, Rule ID: AFFECT_EFFECT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'effect'?
Suggestion: effect
...ews coverage in this time period had an affect on the cancellation. If the contracts were...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, so, then
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2042.0 2260.96107784 90% => OK
No of words: 392.0 441.139720559 89% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.20918367347 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44960558625 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.731518682 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 162.0 204.123752495 79% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.413265306122 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 615.6 705.55239521 87% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.131159126 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.117647059 119.503703932 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0588235294 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.52941176471 5.70786347227 27% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
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: 0.39107653463 0.218282227539 179% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.147648342037 0.0743258471296 199% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.115128542254 0.0701772020484 164% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.261050538391 0.128457276422 203% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0574563144038 0.0628817314937 91% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.23 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.8 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 75.0 98.500998004 76% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.