“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

The given argument presents a case where a news program is receiving lot of complaints regarding its weather and local news coverage. Further he claims that expansion in their timings will help in resolving this issue. I think that the evidence provided to support the claim lacks justification.

Firstly, the author does not give information about the complaints regarding weather and local news. The reduction in timings and the reception of complaints might be mere coincidence. If at all they are connected, a justification is required. Since no justification is provided, it is like an open ended question i.e. what is the cause for the complaints? What are the specific concerning points? It is possible that the viewers are concerned about the poor quality of news. It is possible that they are concerned about wrong statistics being telecasted recently. Before taking any decision on increasing time for weather and local news, it is of utmost importance to dig down to the root cause of complaints and try to fix them first.

Secondly, no reason on the cancelation of advertising contract has been provided. It can be because the advertising agencies might have found a better channel which is attracting more public, or it is an off season when agencies do not expect customers so they are not displaying their commercial to avoid unnecessary losses.
In that case, expansion of timings will not guarantee the enrolment of new contacts.

Last but not the least, restoration of time devoted to weather and local news means reduction in time dedicated to national news. No description regarding the popularity of national news has been provided. It is possible that people might be liking national news. Hence the decision for expansion of weather and local news timings might turn against them.

Clubbing up all the points, I can say that more rigorous analysis is required to come on a conclusion of whether restoration will be successful. Firstly root cause of the complaints need to be identified, secondly root cause for reduction of commercial contracts needs to be investigated and lastly analysis on the popularity of national news needs to be conducted.

Votes
Average: 7 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

flaws:
argument 1 -- OK

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- not OK. Need to argue against the conclusion: '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'.

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 356 350
No. of Characters: 1780 1500
No. of Different Words: 175 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.344 4.7
Average Word Length: 5 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.831 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 123 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.8 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.964 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.308 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.522 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.096 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5