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 cancelled 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.
In the argument, the author states that by devoting time back to local news and news, the advertising revenues will restore. The author came to this conclusion as according to him due to increasing the time to national news and giving less time to local news caused the local advertiser to cancel the advertisement. In order to evaluate the argument, it is required that 3 evidences are justified.
First of all, the author mentioned that complains were received by viewers was related to station’s coverage of the local news and weather, but never stated that there was some issue related to the national news. If the viewers had issue related to national news being broadcasted for longer time then, they might have related the same. For instance, if a viewer is not interested to watch national news at late-night programs, then he/she would have complained regarding the same, rather than complaining about the local news. Here it maybe that since local news and weather were not properly broadcasted rather than national news being the cause. If above scenario holds true then the validity of author’s argument stands flawed.
Secondly, the author stated that local advertisers cancelled the advertisement and reason for that is national news. It may be true that national news was not the reason behind the cancellation of the contracts, rather it could have been related to some misinformation or rather some inaccuracy in information shown in local and Weather news with shorter time slots or national news. For instance, by any chance some unverified news was broadcasted, this led to spread of misinformation and hence as a precautionary measure the advertisers have cancelled their contract. If above scenario is true then, authors’ argument holds not water and is weaken.
Thirdly, the author stated that once time devoted to weather returns to normal there will be increase in viewers watch time and advertisers will return. It may be true that the viewers have lost interest and have found other news channel far more interesting and so the advertisers want to have contract with those news channels rather than this. It may also be true that viewers and advertisers might have lost interest in the news channel. This scenario completely invalidates the author’s argument.
In conclusion, it can be stated that author’s argument is flawed and is weakened due lack of proper evidence. If author is able to provide evidence for above mentioned scenarios, then it would definitely help to properly evaluate the real cause.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 417 350
No. of Characters: 2077 1500
No. of Different Words: 175 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.519 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.981 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.631 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 142 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.167 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.4 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.373 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.583 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.15 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 650, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...her than national news being the cause. If above scenario holds true then the vali...
^^
Line 5, column 645, Rule ID: BEEN_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Consider using a past participle here: 'weakened'.
Suggestion: weakened
...uthors’ argument holds not water and is weaken. Thirdly, the author stated that onc...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, hence, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, for instance, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2142.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 416.0 441.139720559 94% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.14903846154 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.51620172871 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73305362198 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 182.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.4375 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 662.4 705.55239521 94% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.823671877 57.8364921388 93% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.0 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1111111111 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.22222222222 5.70786347227 127% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
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: 0.323957345319 0.218282227539 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.122337455137 0.0743258471296 165% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.108299091955 0.0701772020484 154% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.205269045487 0.128457276422 160% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.123827752229 0.0628817314937 197% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.89 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.89 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 82.0 98.500998004 83% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.