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.
While it is true that the television station to reform the programs to attract more viewers and advertising contracts, the business manager's dicision to expand the coverage of weather and local news is based on several ungrounded assumptions.
To begin with, as the time for weather and local news decreases, viewers still complaints a lot about it. Based on this evidence, the manager assumes that people are disatisfied because the programs are not sufficient. However, this assumption can be wrong. Several factors can contribute to people's attitudes towards the programs. For example, people may find that the weather forecast is not precise enough, cauing lots of trouble to people's daily life, or that the local news are large impertinent to the community life, so they are simply valueless. It is prudent for the business manager to conclude that the TV station should cover more weather and local news to win viewers until the complaints collected from viewers are carefully analysed.
Secondly, the manager's argument on the decreasing advertising contracts is also flawed. The manager believes that the TV station is losing contracts because of the increased time to national news. But no concrete evidence have been given to link the two. It is likely that the price for advertising is overwhelmingly higher compared to other TV stations in the area, driving the companies to other stations. If this, or any other reason were true, the expansion in whether and local news would not reverse the declining revenues of advertising.
Last but not least, it is not adequate to expand the coverage of weather and local news on all the news programs of the TV station. It might be true that many viewers are expecting local news, but this does not necessarily mean that national news are not welcomed by all the customers. That is to say, the manager should realize that the people complaining may only represents a small group of viewers. Arguably, the high proportion of complaints on weather and local news could be attributed to the unsatisfaction from viewers who favor these program formats, whereas those interested in national news are quite satisfied, so the TV station receive few complaint from them. Thus, it is crucially important for the TV station to understand the preferences of all the viewers.
In conclusion, it is definitely imperative for the TV station to make changes, but the current policy of the manager is based on unwarranted assumptions, making it far from possible to increase the revenues and the number of viewers.
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Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 293, Rule ID: TO_NON_BASE[1]
Message: The verb after "to" should be in the base form: 'people'.
Suggestion: people
...rong. Several factors can contribute to peoples attitudes towards the programs. For exa...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 15, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...e carefully analysed. Secondly, the managers argument on the decreasing advertising ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 651, Rule ID: MANY_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun complaint seems to be countable; consider using: 'few complaints'.
Suggestion: few complaints
...te satisfied, so the TV station receive few complaint from them. Thus, it is crucially import...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, thus, whereas, while, for example, in conclusion, it is true, to begin with, that is to say
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2143.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 420.0 441.139720559 95% => OK
Chars per words: 5.10238095238 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.52701905584 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7564920278 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 201.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.478571428571 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 658.8 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Interrogative: 0.0 0.471057884232 0% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 64.9343685749 57.8364921388 112% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.055555556 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.3333333333 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.27777777778 5.70786347227 145% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.365264754589 0.218282227539 167% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.117892076956 0.0743258471296 159% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0981864772539 0.0701772020484 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.201125702715 0.128457276422 157% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0771979928744 0.0628817314937 123% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.6 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.5 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.