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 argument, the author concludes that the late-night program should restore time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. Several reasons offered to support this conclusion are: They received complaints from views with concern with the coverage of weather and local news, and that the local businesses cancel the advertising contracts with them during the late-night news program. However, the argument is flawed because it fails to provide clear details and evidence.
First of all, as mentioned in the argument, the author states that most of the complaints received are pertaining to the coverage of weather and local news. However, the author does not tell us which part of the news is being complained about. The final conclusion is to restore the time devoted to this category, but there is no evidence or statistics showing us the problem is on the length of the coverage, it could be the quality instead. Consider an extreme case, the company records the part of the weather and local news as usual and trims it just to shorten the length of it instead of reworking on the procedure and condensing the content to maintain the quality. In this case, it shouldn't be surprised that viewers are complaining about it, and the deliverance should be rehashing the recording plan instead of restoring the time length.
Secondly, the author only informs us about the local businesses canceled their current advertising contract during the late-night news program with the company. How could this be imputed to the retrenchment of local and weather news without any details? The local businesses may want to change the details of the contract, or another company provides them a better contract. Consider a case that the local businesses recant the contract because due to the retrenchment of the weather news, there is more interesting news that attracts viewers' attention, they want to prepare a new contract to increase the length or frequency of their advertisement. In this case, if the company restores the time devoted to weather and local news, they might lose the chance to generate additional profit.
Last but not least, we can't conclude the advertising revenues are shrinking merely based on this argument. As mentioned previously, the local businesses may consider extending or aggrandize the content or extent of the current contract, so they rescind the current one and are preparing for new ones. In this case, if the company changed back to their old policy, they won't avoid the loss in revenues, they will create some instead.
While on the surface this argument may have logical sense, it lacks of great deal of information that is integral to identifying if this is a valid conclusion. To strengthen it the author must provide clear details of the contract and the complaints they received or any other information that can provide that they are suffering because of the retrenchment of the weather and local news during the late-night program.
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: 495 350
No. of Characters: 2448 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.717 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.945 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.594 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 183 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 155 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.299 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.367 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.578 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.156 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 691, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: shouldn't
... maintain the quality. In this case, it shouldnt be surprised that viewers are complaini...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 24, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...ional profit. Last but not least, we cant conclude the advertising revenues are s...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, while, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 22.0 11.1786427146 197% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 45.0 28.8173652695 156% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2504.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 493.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.07910750507 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71206996034 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65612136073 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.42799188641 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 762.3 705.55239521 108% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.1829012683 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 139.111111111 119.503703932 116% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.3888888889 23.324526521 117% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.27777777778 5.70786347227 75% => 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 : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.33536276883 0.218282227539 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.120128557072 0.0743258471296 162% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0892324299967 0.0701772020484 127% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.203164342863 0.128457276422 158% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.106202600598 0.0628817314937 169% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.2 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 52.53 48.3550499002 109% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.6 12.197005988 103% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.48 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.5 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.