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 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 believes that the retrieving back of viewers and the local businesses from their channel is due to the less time they are devoting to weather and local news. Although it is as necessary for a news channel to cover the weather and local news as it is to cover national news, it cannot be the sole reason of the depreciation in viewers and company advertising contracts.
The argument provided by author is not substantially supported by reasons. There can be other plausible reasons for such complaints. One of them can be the truthfulness of the news they are providing. Some questions needed to evaluate the argument viably are : How reliable and true is the news? How unbiased is the channel? Can we trust the integrity of the sources of the news? Hence, it is just not the lack of weather and local news, it is the reliability of the news that they are providing and might be one of the causes of the complaints of the user.
Suppose, A news channel in Japan, if doesn’t cover the news about the local climate which might lead to disasters such as Tsunami or about the eruptions of a volcano, it will prove quite brutal for the native lives.
The same argument is possibly valid for the local advertisers too. The other reasons for the cancellation of contracts might be the current economic status of the companies, that is if they are not economically stable they will cut on the advertising funds. Another reason can be the increase in the rates by the news channel for advertising. Or if the channel does not provide what it promised for. Yet another plausible reason can be that other news channels can endorse the company more cogently than this particular news channel and for the same rates.
Hence, all the reasons I have mentioned above can be the cause of the channel’s lesser turnout and if given a proper review to all the above causes it might lead to a deeper look into the subject.
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
Need one more argument.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
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No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
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No. of Words: 342 350
No. of Characters: 1540 1500
No. of Different Words: 150 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.3 4.7
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No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 47 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 30 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.375 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.025 7.5
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Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.367 0.35
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Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.135 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5