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 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 just cancelled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The business manager of the television station recommends that the station should switch back to showing more content pertaining to the weather and local happenings. He comes to this conclusion on the basis of the number and the nature of the complaint filed by the viewers and the cancellation of advertisement contracts of the regional businesses. Although it might be possible that increasing the provincial content in the station's timeshare may bring about increased viewership, the business manager must provide the following three pieces of evidence to bolster his argument.
First of all, the business manager is required to provide evidence that the complaints received from viewers regarding their disapproval of the switched content is actually representative of the viewer's opinion in general. For example, it is possible that the high number of complaints are actually being received from a small group of viewers and that the audience, in general, does not eschew from the increased coverage of national news. Also, it might be of relevance to know what is the total number of complaints received in the last year in ratio of the total number of viewers engaged in the station network for the same period. If the total viewership is 5,00,000 and the number of complaints was around 500, which is only 0.1% of total audience strength, the strength of the argument decreases considerably. Hence, if any of these two pieces of evidences reveal an unwarranted assumption, the manager's argument does not hold water.
Second of all, what is the evidence that the reason for the cancellation of contracts of advertisement by the local businesses is the station's change of roster in terms of programming? It is quite possible that the nation might be going through a general depression in the economy and the local businesses, in their attempts to thrive, are looking for options for cost-cutting to reduce their extraneous expenditures. If this indeed proved to be the case, then this phenomenon would not be specific to one television station let alone because of a change in that station's time slots. Further to this, it might also be the case that the local businesses changed their medium of advertisement to a medium other than television e.g. the businesses found that their targeted audience is more engaged in newspaper reading. If any of these two pieces of evidences show that the assumptions taken by the business manager are without basis, the manager's argument completely falls apart.
Lastly, the manager of the station should provide evidence that switching back to devoting more time to the provincial matters and weather report would indeed boost the viewership of the channel. Quite possibly, it may be the case that some other local competitor television station is already engaged in providing content of the local matters and the audience might be tuned in to the same and to get the audience to switch back to their station might prove to be a herculean task. Similarly, it is also possible that regional businesses have already found alternative media, whether through television or posters to showcase their products and thus, might not jump back to the previous station just because of the revival of increased coverage of local news. Hence, if any of these two pieces of evidence result in proving the assumption of the business manager to be lacking support, the strength of the argument presented by the business manager is considerably reduced.
Thus, to conclude, while it might be possible for the television station that increasing the ambit of local news and weather reports in their timeshare might increase the station's viewership and/or help them in sustaining long term contracts with their advertising business associates, the business manager of the station must provide three shreds of evidence as mentioned above to bolster the persuasiveness of his argument. However, the recommendation, as it stands now, is rife with unwarranted assumptions and logical holes.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 650 350
No. of Characters: 3314 1500
No. of Different Words: 246 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.049 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.098 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.787 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 250 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 214 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 143 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 85 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 34.211 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.866 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.842 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.368 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.559 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.118 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 196, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'viewers'' or 'viewer's'?
Suggestion: viewers'; viewer's
...ntent is actually representative of the viewers opinion in general. For example, it is ...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 904, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...s reveal an unwarranted assumption, the managers argument does not hold water. Second...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 585, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Further,
...f a change in that stations time slots. Further to this, it might also be the case that...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 938, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...business manager are without basis, the managers argument completely falls apart. Las...
^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 172, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...s in their timeshare might increase the stations viewership and/or help them in sustaini...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, e.g., first, hence, however, if, lastly, look, may, regarding, second, similarly, so, then, thus, while, for example, in general, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 30.0 19.6327345309 153% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 44.0 28.8173652695 153% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 101.0 55.5748502994 182% => OK
Nominalization: 36.0 16.3942115768 220% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3375.0 2260.96107784 149% => OK
No of words: 649.0 441.139720559 147% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.20030816641 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.04732388556 4.56307096286 111% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82752043442 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 254.0 204.123752495 124% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.391371340524 0.468620217663 84% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1042.2 705.55239521 148% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 34.0 22.8473053892 149% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 67.5287565707 57.8364921388 117% => OK
Chars per sentence: 177.631578947 119.503703932 149% => OK
Words per sentence: 34.1578947368 23.324526521 146% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.31578947368 5.70786347227 146% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.230399762476 0.218282227539 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0776895726842 0.0743258471296 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0519726607842 0.0701772020484 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.145762139578 0.128457276422 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.028434003399 0.0628817314937 45% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 20.1 14.3799401198 140% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.97 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 16.6 12.197005988 136% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.47 12.5979740519 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.56 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 133.0 98.500998004 135% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 15.6 11.1389221557 140% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.