Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increasingly more time to covering national news and less time to covering weather and local news. During the same time period, most of the complaints we received from viewers were concerned with the station’s coverage of weather and local news. In addition, several local businesses that used to run advertisements during our late-night news program have just cancelled 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 restore any 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 author affirms that the reduction of viewers and advertising revenues is strictly related to the changes made during the past year, which have given more space to national news in the face of a reduction in the time allocated for weather and local news. However, the reasoning leading to the conclusion may be affected by inchoate assumptions.
First of all, the fact that the television station has received complaints on the coverage of weather and local news does not imply that those are referred to the lower time given to the two points of the agenda. Actually, the writer does not specify the matter of the complaint. For instance, television audience could have complained the quality of the program instead of its time allocation. In addition, the decision of local business to cancel advertising contracts may be linked to external factors, independent from the station's new policy. Assuming a context of crisis, small companies may save financial resources in order to reduce the probability of default. This helps to explain the choice of cutting on advertising expenses.
Moreover, it is not clear how much the plunge of viewers and advertising revenues will affect profits of the television station. This is since no quantification is exhibited in the reasoning of the author. If the amount of total complaints is not relevant, then the management should not worry about the impact of the discontent on the station's profitability. Following the same reasoning, if the station has lost revenues from local businesses but augmented those from national or international companies - as a consequence of the higher time devoted to national news - then it would be not necessary to restore the old policy.
In addition, future is characterised by uncertainty. This means that it is not sure whether the station will be able to attract more viewers and augment the advertising revenues by just restoring the time devoted to weather and local news to previous levels. This may occur as a result of an environment that has changed between the last year. For instance, if local businesses defaulted or stipulated advertising contracts with other news stations, then even with the reinstatement the company would not experience an increment in advertising revenues. Also, people’s preferences may have changed, demanding a new form of information disclosure. Thus, the decision to conduct the news as previous may not be effective on the number of viewers.
To conclude, it is possible to find several flaws in the author’s argumentation which weakens the final claim. However, in order to strength his position, the writer should report more convincing evidence on the correlation of the complaints and the cancellation of advertising contracts with the new station’s policy. Then, the impact of the latter on profits should be quantified painstakingly and future uncertainty should be taken into account.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 468 350
No. of Characters: 2398 1500
No. of Different Words: 221 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.651 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.124 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.883 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 183 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 150 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 108 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 70 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.286 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.713 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.762 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.288 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.288 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.035 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 337, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...out the impact of the discontent on the stations profitability. Following the same reaso...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 450, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...certainty should be taken into account.
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, thus, for instance, in addition, as a result, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 26.0 16.3942115768 159% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2456.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 468.0 441.139720559 106% => OK
Chars per words: 5.24786324786 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65116196802 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.97807287729 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 227.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.485042735043 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 760.5 705.55239521 108% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.0602778257 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 116.952380952 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.2857142857 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.90476190476 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.249147373306 0.218282227539 114% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.06344783282 0.0743258471296 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0840146496195 0.0701772020484 120% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.151147164337 0.128457276422 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0688542352454 0.0628817314937 109% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.47 12.5979740519 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.95 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 125.0 98.500998004 127% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => 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.