"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 following argument is flawed for numerous reasons. Primilarly, the argument is based on the unwarranted assumption that the customers are complaining about the quantity of the local news and that viewership of the program has declined, rendering it's conclusion, to increase local coverage, invalid.
The argument assumes that the complaints recieved regarding local news is because of the reduced show-time allocated to it. The argument does not state what are the kinds of complains received. There is a possibility that customers are complaining because the program is broadcasting fake news or maybe because the host is not delivering the news properly or because of erronuous weather reports or any other reason. There is no evidence that the complaints are because of the limited time allocated to local news. Had the argument mentioned that these complaints were related to the quantity of local news then increasing the local news show time would make much more sense.
It is stated that there is loss of advertisement revenue due to the changes in the past year. There seems to be no good reason to believe that the lack of advertisements is related to the decrease in local news coverage. Local businesses may have stopped advertisements because it may not be profitable to them, maybe they realised advertising during a late night show is not sutiable for their target audience, maybe the local economy is down and the bussinesses have no money to spend on advertisements. There could be many more reasons for businesses to stop advertisements. The argument would have been strengthened had it mentioned these bussinesses were shifting to channels with higher local news coverage.
The argument does not provide numbers on the change of total viewership of the program. It just states that the program wants to attract more viewers. There is no data on the change in viewership of the channel yet the argument assumes the viewership declined.
Because the argument makes several unwarranted assumptions and lacks actual data, it fails to make a conving case to devoting more time to local news and weather.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: The argument assumes that the complaints recieved regarding local news is because of the reduced show-time allocated to it.
Error: news Suggestion: No alternate word
Error: show-time Suggestion: show time
Error: recieved Suggestion: received
Sentence: There is a possibility that customers are complaining because the program is broadcasting fake news or maybe because the host is not delivering the news properly or because of erronuous weather reports or any other reason.
Error: news Suggestion: No alternate word
Error: erronuous Suggestion: erroneous
Sentence: Local businesses may have stopped advertisements because it may not be profitable to them, maybe they realised advertising during a late night show is not sutiable for their target audience, maybe the local economy is down and the bussinesses have no money to spend on advertisements.
Error: realised Suggestion: No alternate word
Error: may Suggestion: No alternate word
Error: bussinesses Suggestion: businesses
Error: sutiable Suggestion: suitable
Sentence: The argument would have been strengthened had it mentioned these bussinesses were shifting to channels with higher local news coverage.
Error: bussinesses Suggestion: businesses
Error: news Suggestion: No alternate word
Sentence: The argument does not provide numbers on the change of total viewership of the program.
Error: viewership Suggestion: No alternate word
Sentence: There is no data on the change in viewership of the channel yet the argument assumes the viewership declined.
Error: viewership Suggestion: No alternate word
Sentence: Because the argument makes several unwarranted assumptions and lacks actual data, it fails to make a conving case to devoting more time to local news and weather.
Error: news Suggestion: No alternate word
Error: conving Suggestion: No alternate word
Error: unwarranted Suggestion: No alternate word
---------------------
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: 346 350
No. of Characters: 1749 1500
No. of Different Words: 156 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.313 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.055 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.8 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 118 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.625 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.295 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.188 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.37 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.597 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.108 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
if, may, regarding, so, then
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1787.0 2260.96107784 79% => OK
No of words: 346.0 441.139720559 78% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.16473988439 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.31289638616 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86504830458 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 160.0 204.123752495 78% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.462427745665 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 569.7 705.55239521 81% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => 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: 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: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 66.2407717629 57.8364921388 115% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.6875 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.625 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.75 5.70786347227 31% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 6.88822355289 203% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.257122271293 0.218282227539 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0914041543592 0.0743258471296 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0796532764265 0.0701772020484 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.138996397714 0.128457276422 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0804994238015 0.0628817314937 128% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.42 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 82.0 98.500998004 83% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.