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.
In the above assertion, the author has opined that the company should increase coverage of weather and local news, in order to get more viewership and advertisement. The reason that is sited here is, the increased complaints from viewers about lack of coverage or weather and local news, and loss of revenue from advertisement. The time-period, for which this observation is based upon, is around one year.
Unless substantiated with well-collected data, it doesn’t seem too obvious, that telecasting national news reduces viewership - for then the question will be, who watches national news. People are equally interested to know about their local happening as well as the national level events. After a long day’s work, people sit beside their television set to watch their respective favorite programs, and national news, local news, weather, sports or movies are equally probable to be watched. During a political election or a nation-wide sports tournament, people are more interested to watch the national channels than local channels. So these two types of news are not competing rather they are complementary to each other.
Clearly, there are two parts of the argument, one of which seems plausible while the other part lacks veracity. The first part that says, there has been increased complaint from viewers about the coverage of weather and local news, seems justified, because it comes directly from the affected mass. If a number of people come and state that they are not satisfied with the coverage, there can be nothing to argue against that. No survey could have been more effective to bring forth such feedback. Here, it will not be prudent to assume that some people, with vested interested to perplex the TV channel company, intentionally came up with such spurious feedback.
On the other hand, the assertion that the local businesses have cancelled their advertisement contract just for the fact that national news is getting more priority, is fallacious. In all probability, the viewership has not reduced. There may be another reason for less advertisement contracts such as a new and better TV channel that may have come up, or another more modern method of advertising, such as internet-based digital advertisement, has emerged. Or may be another channels has started telecasting something even more interesting.
To conclude, the TV channel can consider striking a balance between coverage of local and national news, but the reason to focus should only be the customer complaints, and not the attenuation of revenue from advertisement.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
----------------------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 412 350
No. of Characters: 2097 1500
No. of Different Words: 207 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.505 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.09 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.752 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 145 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.235 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.154 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.529 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.564 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.075 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 323, Rule ID: HE_VERB_AGR[8]
Message: The proper name in singular (TV) must be used with a third-person verb: 'channels'.
Suggestion: channels
...t contracts such as a new and better TV channel that may have come up, or another more ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, if, may, so, then, well, while, such as, as well as, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2178.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 411.0 441.139720559 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.29927007299 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.50256981431 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.88018344689 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 217.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.52798053528 0.468620217663 113% => OK
syllable_count: 668.7 705.55239521 95% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.2508621619 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.0 119.503703932 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.8333333333 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.55555555556 5.70786347227 80% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.269528179856 0.218282227539 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0853241251584 0.0743258471296 115% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.075406233564 0.0701772020484 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.159187933965 0.128457276422 124% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0856012475907 0.0628817314937 136% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.76 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.49 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 98.0 98.500998004 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.