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 time period, most of the comp

Restoring the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level could be a good solution. But the author makes a number of unsubstantiated assumptions which take him/her to take this decision. Based on these assumptions, he/she makes his bold proposal of returning to the previous level of time of weather and local news. Although this solution is thought to lure more viewers to the program and to avoid losing more advertising incomes, this may fail in achieving that goal and it could even make the station lose viewers.

The author's first mistake is to assume that complaints received determine that it is necessary to get back to the former level of the programs. The author points out that during the past year, most of the complaints were concerned with their station's coverage of weather and local news. He/she gives no reason; however, to think that the change of the programation make angry to all the viewers. Perhaps, the number of the complaints received were only five, most of them showed that the emisor did not like the new programation. In addition, the author does not mention if the applied policy make the viewers goes up or down, it is possible that number of viewers has gone up. If the author had given the exact number of complaints and the percentage of this number represents to all the number of viewers, it had strengthened his/her argument.

Secondly, the argument also leaves many other unanswered questions. The argument says that the local businesses which used to advertise during late-night news have canceled their contract. Perhaps, those businesses closed because things went wrong and they do not need to advertise anymore. If the argument had presented a survey where it is shown the motifs which each local business had to cancel the contract with the television station, and this survey reflects that the change of the programation is the main reason, the asgument would be more persuasive.

Finally, the conclusion that restoring the time devoted ot weather and local news to its previous level in order to attract more viewers and avoid losing further revenues is unsupported. Even if we suppose that the previous two reasons stated made lose viewers and incomes from advertising, it does not follow that by returning to former condition, the viewer goes up and the local businesses will stop canceling the contracts. Some viewer could be lost because they liked the new programation and, while the programation was changed the former viewers could have been lured by the programation of other channels and they will not probably return to watch this television station.

Because of the author trusts in unsupported assumptions, he/she fails in creating a solid case which demonstrate that the change in the programation make the tv station lose advertising contracts and viewers.