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 would be needed in order to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The argument reaches the conclusion that the television station must restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. This conclusion is built on the premise that reducing the time allocated to such news led to many complaints, and that local businesses cancelled their advertising contracts with the late-night news program. However, in reaching their conclusion, the business manager fails to provide specific evidence to back up their claims. There are three main pieces of evidence that are necessary to evaluate the argument.
First, the business manager must provide evidence that the complaints received from viewers were representative of the news program's audience. It is possible that only a very small fraction of the audience did not like the changes made to the program, and that the number of complaints was not significant enough. If the total audience of the program was, say, 5 Million, and the complaints came from 5000 people, what may look like a large number of complaints amounts to about 0.1% of the audience. In fact, it is also possible that the size of the audience increased as a result of the change. If this were true, then the television station may even benefit from keeping the change, and would perhaps gain a larger audience. Moreover, by broadcasting national news, the station may be more likely to gain a pan-national audience. Hence, substantiative evidence is necessary in this regard, for any justification in favour of reversing the news program's decisions.
Second, the argument must state the exact reasons for local businesses canceling their advertising contracts with the program. It is a possibility that these businesses did not attract enough customers to keep their companies afloat, or that the news program did not drive enough sales to these establishments. In this case, the manager's claim that this is a reason to switch back to old programming would prove unfounded. It is also possible that the hosts of the program, or the employees at the television station did not want to endorse the products of these businesses - the argument puts forth no evidence that could connect the canceling of contracts to the change in scheduling.
Third, the argument does not effectively prove that moving back to the previous format would attract more viewers, or that advertising revenue levels would be preserved. Evidence related to such assumptions should be explicitly specified, since the station could potentially lose a lot of money by shifting back to its old format. It may be the case that the complaints were made by people who simply wanted to stay updated on the weather, and were unhappy with the reduced time allotted to it. In this case, the business manager assumes that no other decisions can be taken to address these complaints. A portion of the screen could perhaps be used to update local weather conditions, as an easy fix. If evidence were to arise that no other possibilities were explored or brainstormed, then the argument's conclusion stands unwarranted.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now, considerably fails to make a persuasive case. It fails to provide substantiative evidence to back up its claims, and makes multiple stated and unstated assumptions. The business manager should evaluate the situation logically, looking into the exact reasons for the complaints and the canceled contracts. Viewing numbers could also be used to gauge what portion of the program's audience has been retained, and what new audience has been accumulated. Only with this kind of comprehensive approach, can the television station take an informed decision on how to modify its schedule to cater to its audience.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 11 2
No. of Sentences: 26 15
No. of Words: 602 350
No. of Characters: 3038 1500
No. of Different Words: 253 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.953 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.047 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.765 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 220 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 183 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 129 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 76 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.154 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.031 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.577 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.299 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.487 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.082 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 434, Rule ID: LARGE_NUMBER_OF[1]
Message: Specify a number, remove phrase, or simply use 'many' or 'numerous'
Suggestion: many; numerous
...me from 5000 people, what may look like a large number of complaints amounts to about 0.1% of the...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 797, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'arguments'' or 'argument's'?
Suggestion: arguments'; argument's
...were explored or brainstormed, then the arguments conclusion stands unwarranted. In co...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 417, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'programs'' or 'program's'?
Suggestion: programs'; program's
...so be used to gauge what portion of the programs audience has been retained, and what ne...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, however, if, look, may, moreover, second, so, then, third, in conclusion, in fact, kind of, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 77.0 55.5748502994 139% => OK
Nominalization: 35.0 16.3942115768 213% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3113.0 2260.96107784 138% => OK
No of words: 602.0 441.139720559 136% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.17109634551 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.95335121839 4.56307096286 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8457837077 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 271.0 204.123752495 133% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.450166112957 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 956.7 705.55239521 136% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 10.0 1.67365269461 597% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 39.3410215466 57.8364921388 68% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.730769231 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1538461538 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.07692307692 5.70786347227 89% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 17.0 6.88822355289 247% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.248286197187 0.218282227539 114% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0709684021249 0.0743258471296 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0787378062441 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.149519558911 0.128457276422 116% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0944830852972 0.0628817314937 150% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.5 14.3799401198 101% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.32 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 135.0 98.500998004 137% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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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.