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.
In this memorandum, the business manager of a television station argues that, in order to increase viewership and forestall further losses in advertising revenue, the station should reverse its reallocation of time from the weather and local news to the national news. This argument is based on the fact that since the time allocated to weather and local news was decreased, most viewer complaints have focused on the station's weather and local news coverage and local businesses have canceled their advertising contracts with the station. However, this argument is rife with assumptions and so, several additional pieces of evidence are critical to evaluating the argument.
First, what was the original purpose of increasing the time devoted to the national news? If there was a demand for increased focus on the national news at the time, it is possible that the station gained additional viewers due to the original reallocation. This situation weakens the manager's argument, because reducing the time dedicated to national news could chase away these additional viewers. However, if the change in time came from internal management biases or as a result of a temporary national crisis, then the argument is strengthened since the demand for national news is now lower that the station is catering to.
Then, the argument rests on the assumption that the complaints from viewers about the weather and local new coverage were all related to the decreased time devoted to them. If this is true, then the argument is strengthened. However, the nature of the complaints is unspecified. Instead, the complaints could be regarding the poor quality of these news sections, in which case increasing their air time would only be detrimental to the station's viewership, weakening the argument.
Finally, there is no evidence provided to support any correlation between the local business advertisements and the change in air time devoted to different sections of the news. While it may be true that local businesses would prefer additional local and weather coverage, from the provided memorandum other explanations for the decreased advertisement contracts are equally plausible. Perhaps the station was embroiled in a recent scandal, there is an economic recession, or local businesses are switching to online or newspaper advertising over news stations. If any of these are the case, the argument is weakened as the proposed changes would not forestall further loss of advertising revenue.
Thus, evaluating this argument requires several critical pieces of information. The argument is strengthened if the original purpose for the increased national news coverage is no longer valid in the present situation, if the viewer complaints about the local news weather sections explicitly bemoan the reduced time devoted to these sections, and if there is evidence to support that loss in advertising revenue from local businesses is because of the reallocation in air times. Otherwise, the station mangers argument is weakened.
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Comments
e-rater score 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: 18 15
No. of Words: 474 350
No. of Characters: 2502 1500
No. of Different Words: 182 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.666 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.278 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.816 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 194 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 173 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 121 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 70 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.283 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.381 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.578 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.124 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 286, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...eallocation. This situation weakens the managers argument, because reducing the time ded...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 437, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...r time would only be detrimental to the stations viewership, weakening the argument. ...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, however, if, may, regarding, so, then, thus, while, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.6327345309 148% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 32.0 16.3942115768 195% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2559.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 474.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.39873417722 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.66599839874 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87791629738 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 200.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.42194092827 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 813.6 705.55239521 115% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 87.4688127842 57.8364921388 151% => OK
Chars per sentence: 142.166666667 119.503703932 119% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.3333333333 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.38888888889 5.70786347227 77% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.42311924476 0.218282227539 194% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.153004465309 0.0743258471296 206% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.116343069691 0.0701772020484 166% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.27620955939 0.128457276422 215% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0844936568659 0.0628817314937 134% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.2 14.3799401198 120% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.34 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.69 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.5 12.3882235529 157% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.