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."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The memorandum claims that the increased time-share devoted to national issues on late-night news programming has led to multiple complaints from local viewers and a drop in local sponsorship. As a solution, the manager offers to reinstate the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. The claims are however deeply flawed and based on misinformation and misplaced compulsions.
The inconsistencies in the manager's argument are twofold. Firstly, it is not necessary for a late-night news broadcast to devote a lion's share of its time to local news. Since there are quarterly news bursts throughout the day dedicated exclusively to local news, the late-night slot can be used to cover issues of national importance. The manager should also note that the network has an allied weather channel and a radio station which puts out hourly updates on local weather and traffic conditions. With the advent of mobile phones and internet communication, weather conditions can be monitored instantaneously. Mobile applications like Google Maps and AccuWeather can be programmed to deliver minute-by-minute updates on temperature, humidity and rainfall. This eases the burden on late-night news programs.
Secondly, most of the people in local towns do not have 24x7 access to national broadcasters such as CNN and FOX. In such a situation, the onus is on local news channels to present national and global news. As far as viewership is concerned, local estimates have shown that the number of young people tuning into our late-night broadcast has increased rapidly over the last year. This should be construed as a sign of affirmation for our content. Post our policy shift, our consumer base has been growing steadily at an enviable rate.
Perhaps the most flawed argument in the memorandum is the one concerning advertising contracts. Although it is true that local companies have threatened to withdraw from our late-night programs, we have managed to rake in some quality national sponsors due to our concerted portrayal of nationally relevant issues. Large corporations such as Intel, Nissan and Mazda have now started sponsoring our late-night broadcast. It should also be noted that the quantum of their sponsorship has gone up significantly over the past six months. This has led to a permanent attenuation of our financial constraints.
With a major national election afoot, it would be suicidal for us to abandon our successful format. There is an overwhelming need to keep people informed about major federal policy decisions. Given the popularity of our late-night news anchors and correspondents, it would be prudent for us to devote a major share of air time to covering national politics. There is also a threat of other local networks using this opportunity to spruce up their news content. Such a move would deeply hamper our business and viewership. As long as we are able to keep our core viewership base intact, such belligerents can be easily vanquished.
Therefore, it is amply clear that our decision to use late-night programming to cover national news has proven greatly beneficial to the overall morale of our company and its employees. Regressing to our previous format would not be advisable at this juncture.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
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| 2020-01-27 | jason123 | 69 | view |
| 2020-01-10 | ali.rs | 50 | view |
| 2020-01-03 | Navjot-kaur | 55 | view |
| 2019-12-29 | Reetin | 55 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 28 15
No. of Words: 522 350
No. of Characters: 2677 1500
No. of Different Words: 264 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.78 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.128 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.929 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 199 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 153 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 117 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 81 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.643 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.001 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.321 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.283 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.494 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.093 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 28, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...pulsions. The inconsistencies in the managers argument are twofold. Firstly, it is no...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 464, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...should also be noted that the quantum of their sponsorship has gone up significan...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, however, if, second, secondly, so, therefore, such as, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 41.0 28.8173652695 142% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2742.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 522.0 441.139720559 118% => OK
Chars per words: 5.25287356322 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.77988695657 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.01644762411 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 265.0 204.123752495 130% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.507662835249 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 849.6 705.55239521 120% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 19.7664670659 142% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 43.7212150204 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 97.9285714286 119.503703932 82% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.6428571429 23.324526521 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.10714285714 5.70786347227 54% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => 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: 12.0 4.67664670659 257% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.425153105053 0.218282227539 195% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.113933753837 0.0743258471296 153% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0995655035765 0.0701772020484 142% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.238063008986 0.128457276422 185% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0759803614068 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.6 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.17 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.22 8.32208582834 111% => OK
difficult_words: 155.0 98.500998004 157% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.