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 increased coverage of national news has allegedly resulted in more complaints from the viewers and loss of several business contracts with the local businesses and thus the business manager wants to restore the time devoted to different news items to before the change. Unfortunately, the reasoning in the memorandum has some holes in it and requires some careful re-evaluating.
The business manager says that the most number of complaints received after the new time divisions concerns about the coverage of weather and local news. But the memorandum failed to mention what the most complained about items in the years before, it may entirely be possible that the quality of the weather and local news coverage has always been dodgy and the viewers had always had complaints about it. It is also possible that some other issues coincided with the changing of the time devoted to various news sections, maybe along with the coverage time, the quality of the coverage itself has degraded which prompted the viewers to lodge more complaints. It can also be the fact that because of the advent of some other forms of news sources, such as new and improved software weather applications and alternative source of local news has emerged and the quality of the television stations news coverage can't satisfy the viewers anymore.
The other reason for the television station wanting to go back to the old coverage time level is that several local businesses have canceled their advertising contracts with the television station. But it doesn't mention what their complaints are. Probably it's because they have found some alternatives to advertising on the television station - some cheaper, more engaging source, where it makes more business sense for them to advertise their business. This can work in conjunction with the reasons I delineated in the first paragraph above. Maybe because the viewers are not watching this television station like they used to do because of the degraded quality of the news content, or because there are some other sources from where the viewers are getting their news now and it makes more sense for the businesses to advertise their products there to attract more customers.
In conclusion, it might be true that the television station is receiving more complaints from its customers regarding the coverage of weather news and local news and local businesses are canceling their contracts after they enacted the new timing, but it may be just a coincidence or there might be some other underlying reasons. So, without hastily restoring the time devoted to different news items it'd be better to look for the actual causes for the complaints and canceling of business contracts.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 445 350
No. of Characters: 2244 1500
No. of Different Words: 180 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.593 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.043 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.564 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 139 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 34.231 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.734 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.615 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.409 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.598 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.116 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 911, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...f the television stations news coverage cant satisfy the viewers anymore. The o...
^^^^
Line 9, column 206, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...cts with the television station. But it doesnt mention what their complaints are. Prob...
^^^^^^
Line 9, column 257, Rule ID: IT_IS[6]
Message: Did you mean 'it's' (='it is') instead of 'its' (possessive pronoun)?
Suggestion: it's; it is
...ion what their complaints are. Probably its because they have found some alternativ...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, look, may, regarding, so, thus, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2280.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 443.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.1467268623 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58776254615 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6157987717 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.419864559819 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 721.8 705.55239521 102% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 34.0 22.8473053892 149% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 87.1619590222 57.8364921388 151% => OK
Chars per sentence: 175.384615385 119.503703932 147% => OK
Words per sentence: 34.0769230769 23.324526521 146% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.84615384615 5.70786347227 102% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.328742700603 0.218282227539 151% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.133859882902 0.0743258471296 180% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0900283260758 0.0701772020484 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.233895663911 0.128457276422 182% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0551789188863 0.0628817314937 88% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 19.9 14.3799401198 138% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.97 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 16.6 12.197005988 136% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.18 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.35 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 98.500998004 86% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 15.6 11.1389221557 140% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.