17. The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station.To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format. The decline has occurred despite population growt

The following memorandum suggest that WWAC radio station should change the form of program from current rock-music to a news and talk formats, since the number of listeners has been declined. This argument, however, is not entirely logically convincing, since it ignores certain crucial assumptions.

First of all, it asserts that a decline in listener numbers occurred because of retired people moving into the regions. I wonder if the fact is based on actual numbers of people, or a percentage of people. Since the population of area has been growing, it could negatively affect a ratio of radio listeners to total population. Also, there might be other explanation causing the decline of listeners. For example, it could merely follow seasonal number falling, or the rock-music may be outdated, in extreme case. Therefore, it does not reliable information to evaluate the cause of declination in number of listeners.

Given the argument, changing from one to the other does not guarantee an increase of listeners, or is not considerate decision for current rock-music listeners. The retired people who just moved into the area might not care about the radio. Once WWAC changes their form of music, it would lose the current listeners who like rock-music, and end up with bad reputation instead of increasing numbers of listeners. Also, even though it changes to talk or news program, it would have to compete even harder with other stations who have more experience. Thus, it needs to consider what would be benefits and drawbacks both listeners and the radio station if they change the format.

Moreover, it cannot assume that local sales of recorded music indicate the interest in music. Since there are several different ways to listen music and variety of music devices such as MP3 players, smartphone, and laptop, people do not need to buy music records anymore. Perhaps, the sales of music records fell down significantly because of the exorbitant price, or it is nation-wide phenomena moving toward digital devices.

The argument is not completely sound to support the idea that changing entire format of WWAC. It only has superficial observation through local population composition and sales of music. Sometimes it is worth to see both forest and tree to have a better picture. To be the argument valid, it needs to be analyzed in various aspects: consumers, suppliers, trends, and music industry.