“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 local and weather news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news programs have just cancelled 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.
The memorandum argues that restoring the time the television station gives to weather and local news would attract more viewers and stop the station's revenue loss. The argument is flawed for the following reasons.
Firstly, the argument assumes that most of the complaints regarding the coverage of weather and local news pertain to the actual time devoted to these aspects of news. There is no evidence to preclude the possibility that the complaints may actually be regarding the quality of news. Another possiblity that is overlooked is that the viewers watching weather and local news may actually belong to the better educated or more vocal sections of the society who would like to see accurate news with good quality. Hence, we would need a thorough analysis of the content of the complaints to determine if the time duration is the real factor behind the increased volume of complaints.
Furthermore, the argument goes on to assume that the local businesses cancelled their advertisements during late night shows due to the reduced coverage of weather and local news. There is a strong possiblity that the reduction was due to a demographic shift in the channels people like to watch on the given television station. It may be possible that it is election time in the country and hence the viewers are mostly interested in knowing more about the nationwide geopolitical landscape. There is another interesting perspective: with the advent of technology, possibly people have now shifted to everyday devices like smartphones and tablets to catch up with the weather and news, hence local businesses may have started targetting their advertisement campaigns to these media. To ensure that we are not drawing false conclusions, the television station station should coordinate with local businesses to find out why they have stopped advertising.
Hence, as the previous lines of thought show, the conclusions drawn through the argument presented are premature and need to be backed up by more convincing evidence.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: Another possiblity that is overlooked is that the viewers watching weather and local news may actually belong to the better educated or more vocal sections of the society who would like to see accurate news with good quality.
Error: possiblity Suggestion: possibility
Sentence: There is a strong possiblity that the reduction was due to a demographic shift in the channels people like to watch on the given television station.
Error: possiblity Suggestion: possibility
Sentence: There is another interesting perspective: with the advent of technology, possibly people have now shifted to everyday devices like smartphones and tablets to catch up with the weather and news, hence local businesses may have started targetting their advertisement campaigns to these media.
Error: targetting Suggestion: No alternate word
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- don't have. Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
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.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 12 15
No. of Words: 325 350
No. of Characters: 1671 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.246 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.142 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.74 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 124 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.083 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.22 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.384 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.602 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.114 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 142, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...would attract more viewers and stop the stations revenue loss. The argument is flawed fo...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 853, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: station
...awing false conclusions, the television station station should coordinate with local businesses...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, first, firstly, furthermore, hence, if, look, may, regarding, so
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1703.0 2260.96107784 75% => OK
No of words: 325.0 441.139720559 74% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.24 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.24591054749 4.56307096286 93% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.79152394171 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 169.0 204.123752495 83% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.52 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 533.7 705.55239521 76% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 19.7664670659 61% => 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: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.5221667459 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 141.916666667 119.503703932 119% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.0833333333 23.324526521 116% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.16666666667 5.70786347227 108% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.281624824472 0.218282227539 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.10649709356 0.0743258471296 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.101850775502 0.0701772020484 145% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.157893625046 0.128457276422 123% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.108146095928 0.0628817314937 172% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.8 14.3799401198 117% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.41 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.15 8.32208582834 110% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.