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 Argument given by author that late night news program has lost the revenues and viewers interest just because of the change in the proportion of the timings allotted to the national news and weather and local news has been altered is based on improper assumptions.
The author also assumed that the local businesses advertising may have reduced due to the less viewers for this late night news or their requirement is better fulfilled by advertising with other means like investing more on mobile advertisements, then giving more time to the weather and local news will not make any difference.
It didn't gave the details of nature of the complaints the viewers have given, it can be due to wrong weather forecasting, which made viewer alter their plans or it can be of the nature of the timing of the weather report during the late night news, which has nothing to do with the ratio of the times given to the national and local news
It didn't give a proper details whether there were any local events of high importance and are not given the slots, like any local sports competition which was long awaited or any local polling results. If such important events are left uncovered and other news are given priority, that also may have caused the complaints rise as news given are of wrong priority.
The assumptions considered by the author are not entirely convincing, and change the ratio of the time slot given to national news and weather and local news to increase his revenues and viewer rating need much more analysis. But the author stand can be made strong by including the ramifying the complaints based on their nature, considering the type of local news which is given importance, and trying to find the where the local advertiser are moving for advertising.
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- Progress should be the aim of any great society. People too often cling unnecessarily to obsolete ways of thinking and acting because of both high comfort level and a fear of unknown. 85
- Genius is nothing more than another term for obsession 55
- "The desire of corporations to maximize profits creates conflict with the general welfare of the nation at large. " 90
- University should require every student to take a variety of courses outside the students field of study. 85
Sentence: But the author stand can be made strong by including the ramifying the complaints based on their nature, considering the type of local news which is given importance, and trying to find the where the local advertiser are moving for advertising.
Description: The token the is not usually followed by a WH-adverb
Suggestion: Refer to the and where
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 7 15
No. of Words: 309 350
No. of Characters: 1449 1500
No. of Different Words: 141 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.193 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.689 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.4 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 88 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 62 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 41 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 27 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 44.143 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.667 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.429 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.536 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.849 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.146 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5