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 is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
While it is plausible that viewership and sponsorship have decreased due to devoting more time to national news rather than local and weather news, the arguments presented in the memorandum are not coherent and logically sound. Some of the assumptions made by the manager is completely ill-founded and thus makes his final conclusion untenable.
First of all, the memorandum does not mention the amount of time allocated to national, local and weather news. Without the specific timing information, the term "increased time" is too vague or abstract to reach any conclusion regarding the viewers' complaints. For example, if the time increased for national news is not so significant, then the complaints of the viewers may not be about the duration at all. As the memorandum states, the viewers are concerned about the coverage of weather and local news. The concern of the viewers may have nothing to do with duration of the coverage, rather might be due to the quality of the coverage. The weather news may have been not so accurate during the past year and hence, the viewers may have complained. Without the complete description of the complaints, it is not possible to logically arrive at any sound conclusion regarding the proposed change in coverage time.
Moreover, there is no mention in the memorandum about any decrease in viewers. The complaints of the viewers may have been present before the change of the late-night news program. As a result, retracting the change again may not have any significant effects on the viewership numbers.
Furthermore, there is no mention regarding the content quality of the news shows. Viewers and sponsors are attracted by the content of a program more than it's duration. As such, without knowing whether the content quality has degraded or not, it is not a cogent idea to speculate about the reasons for decrease in both sponsorship and viewership.
Along those lines, the local businesses who used to advertise may have cancelled their contracts because the advertisements are not being shown in the proper manner. The businesses are usually more concerned about how efficiently and grandiosely their products are being advertised rather than the duration of news programs. Without having any solid evidence regarding the advertising quality, it seems to be mere guesses upon which the manager has arrived at his dubious conclusion.
One more point that needs to be considered is the content of the national news. Since the news show has devoted more time to national news, it should have proper content to deliver. If the content of the national news is not appropriate, then it is quite possible that the retracting back to the earlier setting would be beneficial for the tv channel.
In light of the above discussion, we can confidently say that although there might be various reasons behind the decrease in viewership and sponsorship, without having incontrovertible evidences, it is not prudent to arrive at the conclusion that the manager has reached.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 492 350
No. of Characters: 2466 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.71 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.012 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.744 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 180 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 158 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 100 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 67 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.364 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.327 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.682 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.345 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.609 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 7 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 229, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: Some
...m are not coherent and logically sound. Some of the assumptions made by the manager is comp...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 902, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... sound conclusion regarding the proposed change in coverage time. Moreover, th...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, furthermore, hence, if, may, moreover, regarding, so, then, thus, while, for example, as a result, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2549.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 492.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.18089430894 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70967865282 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86393221062 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.443089430894 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 791.1 705.55239521 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.2823137203 57.8364921388 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 115.863636364 119.503703932 97% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.3636363636 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.36363636364 5.70786347227 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 7.0 5.15768463074 136% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.291735668504 0.218282227539 134% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0993721027478 0.0743258471296 134% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0898445713226 0.0701772020484 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.138217714618 0.128457276422 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.096728398308 0.0628817314937 154% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.06 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.32 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 98.500998004 114% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Maximum six paragraphs wanted.
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.