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 presented above is from the business manager of a television station. The manager concludes that if they want to increase their viewership as well as stymie the loss of further advertising revenue, they need to expand coverage of weather and local news on all their news programs. The author reasons that in the past year viewers have complained about the station’s coverage of weather and local news. Furthermore, the author states that local businesses have canceled their contracts with them. Upon cursory reading, the author’s conclusion appears cogent, however, upon closer inspection, the argument is hampered by several unsubstantiated assumptions that dramatically weaken the persuasiveness of the author’s conclusion.
First of all, a major flaw found in the argument above is that the author implies that the news stations viewership has declined, despite complaints received about the station’s coverage of weather and local news, because of the increased attention to national news. While the increased devotion to national news would likely affect coverage of local news, a concrete connection between the type of news covered and the current number of viewers is not effectively made. Though there have been complaints, we do not know if there have been numerous complaints from a wide range of people, or perhaps, from one or two individuals who have made numerous complaints. If the author can not accurately identify the reason, they are losing viewers the author’s conclusion is rendered invalid.
Secondly, another issue found within the author’s argument is that the author assumes that a significant portion of advertising revenue is attributable to their contracts with local businesses. It is not clear exactly how much revenue is generated by contracts with local businesses. Local businesses may have contributed to the overall advertising revenue of the station; however, the author fails to include important information concerning their advertising revenue. It is highly possible since the station decided to increase its coverage of national news, the news station has negotiated contracts with larger businesses. Furthermore, it is likely that the revenue generated by local businesses is marginal. If either of these scenarios proved true, the author would not need to devoted time and effort to salvage their contracts with local businesses.
Lastly, the author suggests that expanding coverage of weather and local news to all news programs will result in more viewers and avoid losing any more advertising revenue. If the news station’s flagging viewership and diminishing advertisement revenue result from problems with their choice of news coverage, the problem can be fixed with the solution posited by the author. However, if the decreased viewership is a result of inflammatory or disparaging views or comments perpetrated by their anchors of the news station, then the author’s conclusion would do little to solve the problem. Moreover, if the local businesses canceled their contracts with the news station, not as a result of the changes made to the news coverage, but because they started airing their advertisements during the daytime when people are at work. It is also possible that the news station increased the price local businesses must pay for their advertisements to be shown. If the notion to expand coverage of weather and local news to all programs does not consider the examples above, then the author’s conclusion would be rendered invalid.
In sum, the author’s conclusion to expand coverage of weather and local news to all programs might bring in more viewers as well as result in greater advertisement revenue. However, due to the argument’s reliance on several unwarranted assumptions the author’s argument does not stand up to critical scrutiny
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 598 350
No. of Characters: 3168 1500
No. of Different Words: 234 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.945 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.298 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.791 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 251 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 207 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 140 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 79 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.23 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.826 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.399 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.399 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.184 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 295, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
... local news on all their news programs. The author reasons that in the past year vi...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, lastly, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, well, while, as a result, as well as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 84.0 55.5748502994 151% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3254.0 2260.96107784 144% => OK
No of words: 598.0 441.139720559 136% => OK
Chars per words: 5.44147157191 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.94510247834 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.91005456636 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 246.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.411371237458 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1000.8 705.55239521 142% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.3948722369 57.8364921388 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 141.47826087 119.503703932 118% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.0 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.30434782609 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => 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: 0.311916471681 0.218282227539 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.115807531001 0.0743258471296 156% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0838519839953 0.0701772020484 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.196521146161 0.128457276422 153% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0669703533352 0.0628817314937 107% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.2 14.3799401198 120% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.57 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.46 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 134.0 98.500998004 136% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.