"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 cancelled 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 author's argument that in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, late-night program should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level is flawed. In the argument, the author not only draws a conclusion based on vague and ambiguous words but also assumes that viewers complained because of the short coverage of weather and local news, not because of the quality of the weather and local news. Furthermore, the author makes the mistake of not considering that the local businesses that used to advertise during late night are having a rough time financially.
To begin, the conclusion is largely based on the assumptions that the late-night news is losing revenues because of increased time to national news. The author fails to indicate the exact amount of time allocated for both national news and weather and local news. Moreover, the author assumes that the quality of the weather and local news is irrelevant, when the assumption is unwarranted. It is possible that the late-night program is getting viewer complaint because of the quality of the weather and local news, not because of the length of the news. Since the author doesn’t consider the quality of the weather and local news, it is impossible to determine whether increasing the time for weather and local news would help the late-night program to avoid losing further money.
Second, the author assumes that the local businesses are not having any rough time financially. If the local businesses are going through financial crisis, it is possible that are cancelling contracts with other media programs. In that case, increasing the amount of time for weather and local news would not solve the problem of losing advertising revenue.
The argument can be strengthened by thoughtfully considering whether the quality of the weather and local news have anything to do with the complaints of the viewer. The argument can be further strengthened if the author would take the financial conditions for the local business into considerations. However, as it stands, the argument is flawed for the stated reasons.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
also need to argue:
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.
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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: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 355 350
No. of Characters: 1777 1500
No. of Different Words: 139 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.341 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.006 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.617 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 59 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.357 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.812 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.471 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.645 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.201 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 5, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
The authors argument that in order to attract more ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, however, if, moreover, second, so, then
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1826.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 354.0 441.139720559 80% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.1581920904 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.33761313653 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70461011841 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 139.0 204.123752495 68% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.392655367232 0.468620217663 84% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 564.3 705.55239521 80% => 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: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => 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: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.6623476498 57.8364921388 88% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.428571429 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.2857142857 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.5 5.70786347227 79% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.376626888922 0.218282227539 173% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.167381706744 0.0743258471296 225% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0982446385005 0.0701772020484 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.244661327511 0.128457276422 190% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.112587693864 0.0628817314937 179% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.91 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 68.0 98.500998004 69% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.