"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increasingly more time to covering national news and less time to covering weather and local news. During the same time period, most of the complaints we received from viewers were concerned wit

The argument is provided by the manager of television station after assessing the demands and complaints of the public with the on-going program schedule of the news channel. As the viewers are complaining regarding lesser of weather and local news along with a downfall in the advertising revenues; the manager recommended ensuring rescheduling their on-going programs. On the surface level, the argument seems to be clear but a deeper scrutiny presents various flaws and loopholes that turn the conclusion flimsy and invalid.

First of all, in this argument the manager ignored the involvement of other news station as there might be other available options to which the advertisers might be tempted to. Moreover the author states the local businesses canceled the advertising contracts with the station. Here the author confuses the cause and effect. There might be some other channels operating in that particular region that provides more sensational news, entertainment dose etc that allured much of viewers and the advertising companies might be interested in investing in those. In absence of knowledge about the other channels, one can't assume that change in pattern of programs will surely yield healthy revenues.

Secondly, regarding the complaints of the viewers no quantitative figure has been presented, just an umbrella term being mentioned "most of the complaints". Till the time, the exact ratio or percentage has been mentioned, one can never be sure of what the majority of people are filing complaints. Had the information been given about the population and number of people complaining, the results could seem to be more accurate.

Last but not the least, in spite of changing the pattern of the program, the channel needs to evaluate the effectiveness of the time when they are relaying news. As said, these are presented during late-night hours, what if people like to watch news during prime-time. There is no clear relation given between any two factors involved. People were concerned with weather and local news but nothing have been mentioned what exactly they want to watch. Thus, the complete explanation seems twisted and entangled.

To recapitulate the author argument is based on vague terminology, erroneous assumptions. Also there are no specific evidences to corroborate the claim. Hence the author's conclusion the by increasing the allotted time to the local and weather news, more viewers will be attracted and revenues will not decrease further, is incredible.