The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"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 discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The business manager of a television station which provide late-night news program asserts from a memo that the program have to restore the time allocated to national news and local/weather news to former status. He explains that after changing the time allotment, complaints have increased regarding local/weather news and local businesses turned down advertisement contracts. However, his assertion relies on several unwarranted reasons and these can be easily ruled out by contradicting cases.
First, he mentioned that the late-night news program have to increase time to local/weather news because many people have complainted regarding this matter. But what if the number of complaints remained the same compared to the former time allotment? He did not mention that the number of compaints have increased compared to the past. Furthermore, what if the most of complaints were about the quality of local/weather news, not the time spared for local/weather news? Then he would fail to take the complaints as a reason to change the time of the program. Only if he collect the evidence that complaints were focused on the time allotment to local/weather news, his argument would be plausible.
Second, his argument is based on another reason that local businesses is not paying money to advertisement to the late-night news program. He assumes that this is because the decreased time to local news, and this is not convincing for following cases. What if local businesses find out that advertising late-night news does not contribute their income and stop advertising? This case can show the serious misunderstanding of the author that increasing the time to local news would increase the local business advertisement again. Therefore, the business manager of a television station have to suggest cogent reason that restoring time to local news can definitely recall advertisement contract from local businesses.
Third, the author primarily assumes that the number of people willing to watch late-night news is analogous from the past to current. When the number of people who listen to late program have decreased over the time, and when people now prefer other kinds of programs broadcast from other stations, any actions cannot guarantee the recovery of viewers and advertisement.
In conclusion, in order to strengthen his argument, the manager of a television station have to provide additional evidences; complaints have been increased compared to the past and they were all about the time matter, local businesses are willing to contract when the station restore time allotted to local news, and the condition of viewers are same to the past and they are willing to see the program.
Sentence: He did not mention that the number of compaints have increased compared to the past.
Error: compaints Suggestion: complaints
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not exactly. The argument goes here:
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: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 433 350
No. of Characters: 2223 1500
No. of Different Words: 172 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.562 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.134 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.711 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 131 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 63 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.471 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.147 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.429 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.462 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.206 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 2 5