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 complaint

In the presented memorandum, the business manager recommends increasing his television station’s coverage of weather and local news on all its news programs. To corroborate this business strategy, he or she cites the fact that the majority of the complaints the station received were related to the decreased amount of coverage of weather and local news and that the station lost contracts with local companies that had been advertising during the late-night news program. While the manager’s effort to attract more viewers as well as avoid losing more advertisement contracts is commended, this business strategy may not yield the desired outcomes as it rests upon a few unwarranted assumptions. If the manager wishes to ensure the success of this strategy, he or she should review and adjust the memorandum in consideration of the following points.

First and foremost, from the memorandum alone, we do not know exactly what issues the complaints addressed. Although the manager appears to assume that they were related to the reduced number of hours dedicated to weather and local news in exchange for the increased time for national news, he or she fails to provide clarity to support this assumption. As it stands, the argument remains unconvincing because there are a considerable amount of other possible aspects that the viewers were not satisfied about. For instance, perhaps, the majority of those who submitted the complaints were not fond of the content of the local news. Another possibility is that they did not appreciate the way the news anchors spoke. Alternatively, critical readers may even question whether the number of the complaints is representative of the viewer base because specific numerical data is not provided. This way, unless the manager can demonstrate that the complaints were not only about the reduced amount of coverage of weather and local news but also statistically representative of the station’s viewers, his or her business proposal cannot be fully substantiated.

Another point of contention is the manager’s reasoning for the lost advertisement contracts with local businesses. Without specifying the reason(s) why they cancelled the contracts, the manager continues to assume that it was due to the recent change of time allocation of the news coverage. Another implicit assumption that he or she makes in asserting this is that the rating for the weather and local news dropped, making the time slot less attractive for advertisement. This causal relationship cannot be well-established as the manager does not provide any relevant information. For example, the station’s competitor possibly offered a cheaper deal for the same amount of expected return on investment. Alternatively, the local businesses probably realized that a different mode of advertisement such as online banners may attract more clients for the same amount of money. To give his or her proposal more validity, the manager should address this assumption in a way that rules out these other possibilities. One way to accomplish this is to run a survey for the local businesses who canceled their contracts in order to identify exactly why they did so.

Finally, building on the points above whose validity is questionable at best, the manager proceeds to propose expanding the station’s coverage of weather and local news on all of its news programs. In so doing, the manager problematically assumes that this specific case of the weather and local news program applies to the rest of its news programs. This claim is evidently far-fetched as the manager does not provide evidence to support this conclusion. To illustrate, it could be only during this specific late-night program that the majority of viewers preferred weather and local news. In the same manner, during the day, political news may be preferred by overwhelming margins. Making this business decision without assessing these possibilities could lead to a failure. Therefore, it would be advisable for the manager to review this situation in its entirety rather than basing the decision on this particular case by, say, consulting morning and day program directors who may know more about their viewership.

In summary, while the manager’s argument is not entirely invalid, it is obviously built on numerous assumptions that need clarity as it stands. In order to ensure that the proposal lead to the stated goals of attracting more viewers and avoiding losing further advertising contracts, the manager should address the aforementioned above and adjust the claim accordingly. With the view of this, in particular, he or she should prove 1) that the complaints were not only about the reduced amount of coverage of weather local news but also statistically representative of the station’s viewers, 2) that the lost advertisement contracts were due to the reduced number of weather and local news, and 3) that this specific case of weather and local news is applicable to the rest of the station’s news programs.