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.
In the given arguments, the business manager of a television station states in his memo that late night news program must allocate longer time to local and weather news as it was done in the past. He states that this is required to attract more viewers and avoid losing revenues. He also provides multiple evidences as reasons for his proposed change. While these reasons seem relevant to the issue stated, the manager also neglects a large number of probablities that undermine his arguments. Thus, the argument seems facile and fraught with holes.
The manager states that over the past year, the late night news programs telecasted by the television station have shifted their attention from local and weather news to national news. As a result, many complaints have been received decrying reduced attention to the former. But the manager doesn't consider the fact that even though it has resulted in increased complaints by local audience, it might also have caused the program's reach to increase due to its coverage of news of the whole nation. People from other towns or cities who neglected these programs previously might have started tuning into follow national news. Thus, reverting back to local news might actually cause viewers to decrease as opposed to what the manager has stated in the argument.
Moreover, the manager also states that local businesses have started canceling their advertising contracts since the coverage of the news has shifted. Hence, he assumes that reverting back the news coverage might prevent this and avoid losing any further revenues. This is a classic case of "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" i.e. the manager confuses correlation with causation. The cancellation of advertisment contracts could have been totally unrelated to the change stated. There can be possiblities such as the local businesses themselves might not be performing well enough to accomodate the costs of advertising. Or it might also be possible that the businesses could have shifted to a different form of advertising via internet or billboards as they feel they can target their customers better through them. The manager is totally ignorant of these possibilites and doesn't provide any sort of evidence such as statistics or survey results as defence against them.
Finally, even if we assume that local businesses cancelled their advertisment contacts due to the same reason as stated by the manager, there is also a possibility that business around the nation could start taking up the vacated advertisement slots as the coverage of the news has more reach now. This might actually stop revenue losses and possibly even increase it to a greater extent than before in the long run. Thus, manager's arguments can have an adverse effect of preventing the growth in the future.
In short, with the above stated points as evidence, it can be concluded that the author's argument is flawed, not well thought out and jumps to a conclusion on the basis of few unwarranted reasons. The argument might have been strengthened if the manager would have been able to provide reports wherein there is a direct decrease of viewership after the coverage change in the past year. It could have also helped, if the manager had taken up a survey from the local businesses requesting the reason for their cancellation of advertising contracts.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 17 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 550 350
No. of Characters: 2747 1500
No. of Different Words: 255 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.843 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.995 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.58 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 202 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 155 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 104 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.913 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.956 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.739 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.316 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.499 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 429, Rule ID: LARGE_NUMBER_OF[1]
Message: Specify a number, remove phrase, or simply use 'many' or 'numerous'
Suggestion: many; numerous
... issue stated the manager also neglects a large number of probablities that undermine his argumen...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 288, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...attention to the former But the manager doesnt consider the fact that even though it h...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Moreover,
...e manager has stated in the argument Moreover the manager also states that local busi...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 865, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...ally ignorant of these possibilites and doesnt provide any sort of evidence such as st...
^^^^^^
Line 7, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Finally,
...rvey results as defence against them Finally even if we assume that local businesses...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 80, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...s evidence it can be concluded that the authors argument is flawed not well thought out...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 251, Rule ID: IF_WOULD_HAVE_VBN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'had been'?
Suggestion: had been
...t have been strengthened if the manager would have been able to provide reports wherein there i...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, hence, if, moreover, so, then, thus, well, while, in short, sort of, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2766.0 2260.96107784 122% => OK
No of words: 548.0 441.139720559 124% => OK
Chars per words: 5.04744525547 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.83832613839 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.57295646296 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 246.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.448905109489 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 875.7 705.55239521 124% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 0.0 4.96107784431 0% => OK
Article: 1.0 8.76447105788 11% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 1.0 19.7664670659 5% => 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: 548.0 22.8473053892 2399% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 0.0 57.8364921388 0% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 2766.0 119.503703932 2315% => Less chars_per_sentence wanted.
Words per sentence: 548.0 23.324526521 2349% => Less words per sentence wanted.
Discourse Markers: 119.0 5.70786347227 2085% => Less transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 0.0 8.20758483034 0% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 6.88822355289 15% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.298974041866 0.218282227539 137% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.298974041866 0.0743258471296 402% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0 0.0701772020484 0% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.1802398974 0.128457276422 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.113514067382 0.0628817314937 181% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 276.4 14.3799401198 1922% => Automated_readability_index is high.
flesch_reading_ease: -484.74 48.3550499002 -1002% => Flesch_reading_ease is low.
smog_index: 0.0 7.1628742515 0% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 217.0 12.197005988 1779% => Flesch kincaid grade is high.
coleman_liau_index: 13.49 12.5979740519 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 34.27 8.32208582834 412% => Dale chall readability score is high.
difficult_words: 120.0 98.500998004 122% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 54.0 12.3882235529 436% => Linsear_write_formula is high.
gunning_fog: 221.2 11.1389221557 1986% => Gunning_fog is high.
text_standard: 217.0 11.9071856287 1822% => The average readability is very high. Good job!
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.