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.
Television is a numbers game, with the powers that be focusing extensively on viewership. The pressure to maintain strong viewership has led this television station manager to make changes to the programming, but unfortunately, has reached a conclusion based on faulty assumptions.
The manager is inferring a causal relationship between the decrease in time of local news and weather to the decrease in advertising contracts. However, correlation does not equal causation. In an often-quoted study, researchers found that the number of murders goes up with the amount of ice cream sold. If one were to assume that correlation equaled causation one would have to conclude that buying ice cream makes an individual more likely to murder someone. However, the truth behind the data is likely that an increase in temperature leads to both increased ice cream sales and increased tempers. Similarly, simply because both local news and advertising contracts have gone down, the manager cannot conclude the two are related. The advertisers could have a whole host of complaints that have nothing to do with the network's television coverage.
The manager also makes an illogical leap when it comes to reviewers' complaints. He mentions that they are complaining about the coverage of weather and local news, but he does not state that they are complaining about the lack of it. It is possible that they are complaining about the quality of it, and by introducing more of it, the viewers would be driven further away. Even if that were their true complaint, the viewers that have left are not guaranteed to come back. They might have already found a network they preferred, and might have moved on without a backwards glance.
Although the television manager's ideas are likely motivated by a desire to succeed, in order to feel confident in moving forward with those decisions, he would need to obtain more evidence to support his assertions. To start, he should obtain information from the advertisers regarding their decision to decline the contract renewal. If the issue is the lack of local news coverage, then it would make sense to enhance that area of programming. Additionally, the manager should obtain more information about the viewers' complaints. If he were to find the lack of coverage is truly the main issue, his decision to increase that area would make sense.
In order to cement the success of the television station, the manager needs to do some more work to ensure that his asssertions are correct. There are too many possible motives for the viewers leaving and the advertisers not renewing to move forward with his current plan. Without gathering more information about the thought processes of the viewers and advertisers, the manager is running the risk of running his network into the ground.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 461 350
No. of Characters: 2303 1500
No. of Different Words: 218 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.634 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.996 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.697 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 161 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.955 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.278 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.29 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.512 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.099 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 306, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...s up with the amount of ice cream sold. If one were to assume that correlation equ...
^^
Line 3, column 823, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'networks'' or 'network's'?
Suggestion: networks'; network's
...laints that have nothing to do with the networks television coverage. The manager al...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 551, Rule ID: ON_FIRST_GLANCE[1]
Message: Did you mean 'at'?
Suggestion: at
...rk they preferred, and might have moved on without a backwards glance. Although...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, regarding, similarly, so, then
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 69.0 55.5748502994 124% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2360.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 461.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 5.11930585683 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.63367139033 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.78113440344 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 223.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.483731019523 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 741.6 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 36.6702133271 57.8364921388 63% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.272727273 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.9545454545 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.45454545455 5.70786347227 43% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.146225480455 0.218282227539 67% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0429834976576 0.0743258471296 58% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0496167606348 0.0701772020484 71% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0769687424226 0.128457276422 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0325659923668 0.0628817314937 52% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.42 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.22 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.