'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.
The manager’s argument that the late-night news program should return to the former level of time is not entirely logically cogent, because it is not strong requiring more information and weighting. It is not explained what is the former level of time devoted to weather and local news to know if it would be enough or a too long time to devote to these matters. If it is a lot of time and the time dedicated to national news would be impaired and other viewers could complain too. Since preferences matters of news change from viewers to viewers.
Furthermore, it was not detailed in memorandum if the complaints from viewers were about late-night news coverage. It is only stated that the complaints were about the station’s coverage of weather and local news but it can occur during all day television programming not only during late-night news, therefore the connection made by the manager was not efficiently made. These viewers who complain may even do not watch the late-night program and being referring just to morning news for example.
The manager implies that the advertisers cancel their contracts due to the little time devoted to local news and weather, however, this argument can not be effectively endorsed. They may have canceled the contracts because of other factors that must be taken in account, for instance, the lower audience of late-night program, financial crises or even just a change in the time of advertisement.
The viewers that had complained about the coverage of weather and local news could not be the same that watch the late-night news. Hence, the manager’s argument that increasing time in coverage of these matters in late-night news will surely attract more viewers to the program is not plausible.
Although devoting time to local news and weather is very important in every television coverage, the manager’s arguments are not completely sound since the supporting sentences are not strong and well related enough.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 12 15
No. of Words: 324 350
No. of Characters: 1609 1500
No. of Different Words: 144 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.243 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.966 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.618 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 115 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 63 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.495 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.451 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.696 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.162 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 488, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Since” 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.
...d and other viewers could complain too. Since preferences matters of news change from...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, furthermore, hence, however, if, may, so, therefore, well, for example, for instance
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1671.0 2260.96107784 74% => OK
No of words: 324.0 441.139720559 73% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.15740740741 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.24264068712 4.56307096286 93% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82735423079 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 150.0 204.123752495 73% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.462962962963 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 520.2 705.55239521 74% => 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: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => 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: 12.0 19.7664670659 61% => 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: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.4438308466 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 139.25 119.503703932 117% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.0 23.324526521 116% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.41666666667 5.70786347227 130% => 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 : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
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: 0.482481758176 0.218282227539 221% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.207373209126 0.0743258471296 279% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0593013418315 0.0701772020484 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.292405920672 0.128457276422 228% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0583335321994 0.0628817314937 93% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.4 14.3799401198 114% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.44 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 71.0 98.500998004 72% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 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.