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.
The conclusion that the television station should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level to attract more viewers and avoid further revenue losses is based on an argument not well-substantiated and more information will need to be provided to draw a reasonable conclusion.
One of the unclear details provided by the manager is the complaints received from the viewers. We do not know the specific issue(s) the viewers had with the station's coverage. The viewer could have a problem with the weather coverage not being reported early enough for them to avoid a thunderstorm or prepare for the rain.
Another thing that will be great to know is the reason the local businesses cancelled their contracts. The case may be that the information broadcasted by the station no longer fit the promotion of the local businesses products, a local shoes company concerned about their publicity will assuredly not advertise their products on a television station dedicated to food production in the area. On the other hand, it could just be that the local business has moved to a new location or run out of business.
Also, more evidence needs to be provided on the stations finances to know if their revenues for providing coverage for the national news at late-night exceeds that of advertising connected to their previous weather and local news coverage. If this is true, then there is little reason to worry about the advertising revenue loses as they amount to overall gain for the station.
It is the clear from the questions above that for the manager to provide an adequate solution to their troubles, they need more specified data provided and also consider the peculiarity of their case.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 10 15
No. of Words: 288 350
No. of Characters: 1409 1500
No. of Different Words: 153 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.12 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.892 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.687 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 96 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 85 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 31 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.8 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.805 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.38 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.708 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.11 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 157, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...pecific issues the viewers had with the stations coverage. The viewer could have a probl...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, if, may, so, then, well, another thing, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 36.0 55.5748502994 65% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1439.0 2260.96107784 64% => OK
No of words: 288.0 441.139720559 65% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.99652777778 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.11953428781 4.56307096286 90% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.72207828063 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 155.0 204.123752495 76% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.538194444444 0.468620217663 115% => OK
syllable_count: 448.2 705.55239521 64% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 10.0 19.7664670659 51% => 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: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 78.3089394642 57.8364921388 135% => OK
Chars per sentence: 143.9 119.503703932 120% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.8 23.324526521 123% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.3 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.188261743599 0.218282227539 86% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0695647127044 0.0743258471296 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0560890024073 0.0701772020484 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.100643214065 0.128457276422 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0573599178065 0.0628817314937 91% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.5 14.3799401198 115% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.31 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.08 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 74.0 98.500998004 75% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.