“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.”
The argument tries to provide reasons for a recent misfortune of a late-night program in attracting and keeping the viewers and advertisement contracts. The reasoning in the argument is not logically flawed; however, as it relies on a number of assumptions and lack of proper evidence. Here some additional evidences are employed that would help to weaken or strengthen the argument.
The argument takes the received viewer’s complaints over the coverage as a primary source of justification that reducing the time of weather and local news has caused falling the number of viewers. But it does not provide any information about the proportion of the national news time over weather and local news. It has just declared the devoted time to national news is increased and the weather and local news quota is decreased. What is the ratio of this increase and decrease to the total length of the program? Or additionally, it is vital to know whether the quality of the program is still held to the former level. It is plausible to assume the quality of program has deteriorated since, as mentioned by the passage, they have encountered a lack of revenues, due to losing advertising contrast as a source of funding, and it may have affected the program and it all has caused a circular reasoning.
The argument also leaves many other unanswered questions. The solution that they provide at the end of the argument is to change everything as it used to be one year ago. The point that the author of the argument is probably oblivious to the fact that what held true a years ago might not hold true today. Many viewers may have accustomed to the current program and another change in the program structure may also detrimental consequences for the program. Therefore, in order to verify this solution, more investigations should be conducted to understand the true reasons that has led to this situation.
Because the argument makes several unjustified assumptions, it fails to make a convincing case that restoring everything to the former conditions would be a great option. In this manner, more evidences should be provided to understand whether the reduction of weather and local-news reduction is the main reason for losing viewers and revenues from advertisers or not.
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: 16 15
No. of Words: 379 350
No. of Characters: 1860 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.412 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.908 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.789 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 140 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 113 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.688 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.629 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.438 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.338 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.54 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.098 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 172, 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.
...erything as it used to be one year ago. The point that the author of the argument i...
^^^
Line 5, column 268, Rule ID: A_PLURAL[1]
Message: Don't use indefinite articles with plural words. Did you mean 'a year' or simply 'years'?
Suggestion: a year; years
...livious to the fact that what held true a years ago might not hold true today. Many vie...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, may, so, still, then, therefore
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1904.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 379.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.02374670185 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41224685777 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.88338715969 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.490765171504 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 603.0 705.55239521 85% => 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: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => 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: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.3551200338 57.8364921388 91% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.0 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.6875 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.4375 5.70786347227 60% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => 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: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.273578551295 0.218282227539 125% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0897926048017 0.0743258471296 121% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.116624527403 0.0701772020484 166% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.142074070581 0.128457276422 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.133741054692 0.0628817314937 213% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.13 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.11 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
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.