"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 business manager states that in order to get more viewers to their news programs and to avoid losing their revenues in advertising they should increase their coverage of weather and local news to all their news programs. This conclusion had come due to the following reasons - Maximum complaints from the viewers about their coverage of weather and local news, Cancellation of advertising contracts of local businesses of showing late night advertisements. The assumptions that were carried out which led the business manager to come to this conclusion is not satisfactory.
Firstly, the manager assumed that the complaints received from it’s viewers were regarding less time given to local news and weather. Perhaps, it’s possible that their complaints were regarding the content shown in the coverage and not on how much time they were showing for. It’s possible that their news was not upto the mark and were not showing irrelevant local news and inaccurate weather reports. Thus, if the following implications are true then the manager’s solution is inconclusive.
Further, the assumption stated that the local businesses have cancelled their contracts of showing advertisements during night. It’s possible that their business isn’t doing so well and they do not have the budget to spend on late night advertisements. Also, the author’s argument doesn’t state how many businesses have cancelled contracts with the news channel. There can be only one or two and they might have cancelled because most of the population do sleep during the night and do not watch television much. Hence, if the above implications are true then the manager’s argument is unsatisfactory.
Finally, the manager concludes that all news programs should show coverage of weather and local news. The manager assumes that the viewers would want to see the local news and weather all day long in every news program. It’s highly unreasonable that just based on complaints regarding coverage on weather and local news from (not provided number of) viewers and cancellation of contract of late night advertisements from (not provided number of) local businesses should the manager conclude that weather and local news to be shown in all news programs. There is a chance that this may cause more loss of viewers from the news channel and ultimately loss of the channel’s revenue. Thus, if the implications are true then the manager’s solution doesn’t hold water.
Analysing the above assumptions I conclude that the argument the author states is unwarranted and does not have enough evidence to conclude the manager’s solution.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 13 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 420 350
No. of Characters: 2147 1500
No. of Different Words: 164 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.527 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.112 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.707 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 140 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 124 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.551 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.381 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.588 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.123 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 59, Rule ID: ABOUT_ITS_NN[25]
Message: Did you mean 'from its viewers'?
Suggestion: from its viewers
...er assumed that the complaints received from it’s viewers were regarding less time given to local...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 64, Rule ID: IT_IS[18]
Message: Did you mean 'its' (possessive pronoun) instead of 'it's' (=it is)?
Suggestion: its
...sumed that the complaints received from it’s viewers were regarding less time given ...
^^^^
Line 7, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... manager’s argument is unsatisfactory. Finally, the manager concludes that all ...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, firstly, hence, if, may, regarding, so, then, thus, well
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2226.0 2260.96107784 98% => OK
No of words: 417.0 441.139720559 95% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.3381294964 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.5189133491 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81562991178 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 169.0 204.123752495 83% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.405275779376 0.468620217663 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 660.6 705.55239521 94% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
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: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 59.76022047 57.8364921388 103% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.666666667 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1666666667 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.33333333333 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => 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: 0.373664615932 0.218282227539 171% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.136485693674 0.0743258471296 184% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.120537102636 0.0701772020484 172% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.208199628259 0.128457276422 162% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.138093707823 0.0628817314937 220% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.3 14.3799401198 106% => 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: 13.99 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.47 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 71.0 98.500998004 72% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => 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
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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.