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 complai

Essay topics:

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."

In this argument, the author claims that the television station should expand their coverage of weather and local news on all their news programs to attract more viewers and to avoid losing further advertising revenues. Although the argument may seem convincing at first, the unwarranted assumptions lead me to question the validity of the argument.

First of all, the author assumes that most of the complaints concerned with their station's coverage was due to their decrease time to weather and local news. However, we need to consider whether viewer's complaints were substantial enough to change their policy. It is quite possible that complaints about scant weather and local news during past year were aberrant. If, during the past year, many people suffered from the aberrant weather, hurricane or flood for example, which was entirely different from the previous years, people might have a plethora of interests in the weather condition. In addition, if the local economy experienced depression last year, people could want to have some information on local news. Besides, if the entire number of complaints from viewers past year was marginal, it could be negligible. Thus, without specifying the complaints from clients, the author's claim stands weak.

Another assumption the author makes is that local businesses have canceled their advertising contracts because of less time to local news. However, there might be another reasons for their cancelation. It is quite plausible that the reason for the cancelation was not due to the coverage of the news but due to economic depression on nationwide. Most of the companies tend to reduce their promotion cost first when they need to cut their expanses. In addition, it is also likely that many companies canceled their contract since they wanted to change their promotion tools from existing television advertisement to internet banners or social media. In such case, there would not be concrete causal relationship between news coverage and cancelation of advertising.

Lastly, the author assumes that if they expand the coverage of weather and local news on all their news programs, they can attract more viewers and can avoid any further advertising revenues. Yet, the author seems to ignore the positive effects from increased airing time to national news. If most of local businesses are based not on local but on nationwide, or if they want to expand their business to out of local market, the increased national news might be more intriguing than local news. Moreover, since the news covers wide range of national issues, it could attract the customers who want to advertise their company. Thus, it is likely that retain to cover more time to national news might be better choice.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed on many grounds. In order to bolster the argument, the unsound assumptions aforementioned need to be taken into consideration.

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Average: 8.2 (3 votes)
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Comments

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, first, however, if, lastly, may, moreover, so, thus, for example, in addition, in conclusion, first of all

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2447.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 468.0 441.139720559 106% => OK
Chars per words: 5.22863247863 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65116196802 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6698929571 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 215.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.459401709402 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 742.5 705.55239521 105% => 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: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.2571666411 57.8364921388 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.227272727 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.2727272727 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.72727272727 5.70786347227 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.323292764216 0.218282227539 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.104062335249 0.0743258471296 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0884447457973 0.0701772020484 126% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.170470750066 0.128457276422 133% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.104955010052 0.0628817314937 167% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.05 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.19 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => 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.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 468 350
No. of Characters: 2392 1500
No. of Different Words: 209 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.651 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.111 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.595 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 98 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.273 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.17 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.317 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.523 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.097 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5