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 time 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 just canceled their advertising contracts with us. 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."
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.
Manager concludes that his television station should reallocate earlier time devoted to local news and weather report bulletins. His conclusion is primarily based on following two premises: First, most of the complaints received by television station are concerned with weather and local news. Second, station is running off local advertising contracts due to cancellation of weather and local news at late nights.
Actually, the first premise of manager is based on assumption that complaints concerning weather and local news, are only demanding restoration of time devoted to weather and local news programs. However, these complaints might be in reference with other issues like, degradation of quality in present weather and local news or high advertisements during present time allotted for weather and local news. Therefore, in order to strengthen the argument, manger, here, must provide evidences supporting the fact that complaints made were actually demanding reallocation for weather and local news time.
Moreover, in the second premise manager presumes that local contracts are highly significant for television station; he does not mentions about other possible revenue sources. Although, television station might suffer from loss of local contracts; but, perhaps, it is also possible that present scheme might be attracting more important national and international contracts. If evidences supporting that national and international contracts are more valuable for station as compared to local contracts, are found, author's argument would be severely undermined. For this purpose, manager can present any record, showing negative impact of abandoning time for weather and local news on station's total revenue over the past year.
Besides this, manager can provide statistical evidences supporting reluctance of viewers in watching new late night programs. Manager can also fortify his argument by presenting direct surveys showing viewers' choice of weather and local news at late nights.
In sum, manager needs to prove the validity of his two premises with required germane evidences. In addition, manager can also use statistical techniques and conduction of surveys for further fortification of the argument.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 330 350
No. of Characters: 1858 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.262 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.63 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.755 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 154 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 138 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.571 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.095 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.786 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.442 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.695 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.207 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5