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.
The manager of the television station states that because they have been losing advertising contracts and receiving complaints after making a shift in the content of their late-night news programs, they must shift to their previous levels of coverage of weather and local news. This statement has various different assumptions which does not make a very convincing argument.
It has been mentioned that the late-night news program has started devoting more time to national news over the past year as compared to before. This has led to devotion of lesser time to weather and local news. However, it fails to mention whether the shift has had a normalizing effect on the content. For example, it might have been that earlier, more than required time was being devoted to local and weather news and there was a need for more national news to be aired. So, devoting more time to national news instead of local and weater news was much required. It also fails to mention whether this shift has garnered an increase or a decrease in the number of viewers. Without there being data which records the change in numbers of viewers, it is difficult to say that coverage of more national news has caused a negative effect on the viewership.
Morever, it is mentioned that there have been complaints regarding the station's coverage of weather and local news. Again, there is nothing that proves that these complaints have been against decreasing the coverage time for the local and weather news. Perhaps, the reporters for the local news were changed over the past year and the viewers were not happy with the current reporters and they lodged complaints for change of reporters. This does not necessarily prove that they want more coverage of the local news. Or perhaps, over the last year, they have realized that they want even lesser coverage of weather and local news and would like more coverage of the national news since maybe, the nation is going through a national turmoil and they wish to remain updated about it. Hence, just the statement about the complaints regarding the station's coverage of local and weather news does not really tell us what the content of the complaints are and whether they really oppose the shift in the station's coverage decisions or they support it.
Also, local businesses have cancelled their advertising contracts for advertisement during the late-night news program. The author fails to mention the reason for their cancellation or even provide an analysis into their cancellation. Maybe, the advertising agencies have cancelled their contracts because the news station had violated clauses of the contract by not airing the advertisements for enough time. Or it could be that these local businesses have incurred losses of their own and cannot afford advertising for themselves. Whatever the reason might be, there is not enough proof to deduce that the cancellation of contracts has been because the station started devoting more time to the coverage of national news and not local and weather news.
As a result of these discrepancies in the arguments and the assumptions made in concluding that the news station must restore their time devoted to weather and local news to its former level, the conclusion fails to be convincing.
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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: 21 15
No. of Words: 543 350
No. of Characters: 2685 1500
No. of Different Words: 200 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.827 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.945 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.508 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 185 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 151 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.857 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.873 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.381 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.389 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.566 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.127 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 72, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...here have been complaints regarding the stations coverage of weather and local news. Aga...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 844, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...ment about the complaints regarding the stations coverage of local and weather news does...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 999, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...her they really oppose the shift in the stations coverage decisions or they support it. ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 506, Rule ID: AFFORD_VBG[1]
Message: This verb is used with infinitive: 'to advertise'.
Suggestion: to advertise
...d losses of their own and cannot afford advertising for themselves. Whatever the reason mig...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, hence, however, if, may, really, regarding, so, for example, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 25.0 11.1786427146 224% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 48.0 28.8173652695 167% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2738.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 543.0 441.139720559 123% => OK
Chars per words: 5.0423572744 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.82725184711 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.54062895864 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.377532228361 0.468620217663 81% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 831.6 705.55239521 118% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.273763607 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.380952381 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.8571428571 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.71428571429 5.70786347227 65% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => 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: 0.429837684147 0.218282227539 197% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.170858524979 0.0743258471296 230% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.113028697906 0.0701772020484 161% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.26448707955 0.128457276422 206% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0655875737006 0.0628817314937 104% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.25 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.96 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.