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 manager of the television station concludes that restoring the local and weather news level to former level increases the viewers and advertisers. He comes to this conclusion based on customers complaints and his observation. The author's assertion might be true but following three explanations must be substaintated in order to determine the credibility of the argument.
First of all, the author assumes that the complaints received from the viewers about coverage of weather and local news is because of devotion to less time towards it. It is possible that the dissatisfaction be due to quality of the news as well as the presenter of the news, not to the quantity of the information and time spent on it. Also, the news casted in the television are not veritable which have been reproached in the near future that have increased the level of frustation in the watchers of the channel. If any of these scenarios have merit, then the conclusion of the argument is significantly flawed.
Secondly, the manager assumes that increasing the local and weather news increases the quantity of the viewers. Perhaps increasing the amount of local news infuriates the non-local people who make up a huge portion of the subscriptor of the channel and doing so might have less increase in local viewers in comparision to wane of the viewers from other areas. Further, other factors such as reduction in amount of advertisements, delivery of more current and pressing news rather than hackneyed and tedious information, already known to the people, might contribute more to increase the number of viewers than the assumed local and weather news. If any of these cases are true, then the argument does not hold water.
Finally, the author assumes that increasing local and weather news attracts more advertisers. It might be possible that this might result to increase in viewers of the local region and the overall advertisement of the product across the nation might be limited causing further resentment in the advertisers whose product is already famous in the home-town but wanted to proliforate their business to other areas. Moreover, the contracts are being canceled because of the relatively high cost for the advertisement. There might be another station with comparable number of viewers but low cost of promotion which have attracted marketers. So, decreasing the cost of the promotion might result in more contracts which is not related to the type of news delivered. If any of these are the practical conditions, then the persuasiveness of the argument is weakened.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to provide evidence to these three explanations (perhaps based on systematic study approach), then the viability of the argument can be fully evaluated.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 10 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 467 350
No. of Characters: 2358 1500
No. of Different Words: 201 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.649 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.049 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.846 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 166 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 143 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.579 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.245 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.895 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.351 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.543 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 235, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ers complaints and his observation. The authors assertion might be true but following t...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 211, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... is possible that the dissatisfaction be due to quality of the news as well as th...
^^
Line 5, column 485, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...re current and pressing news rather than hackneyed and tedious information, alrea...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, if, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, well, in conclusion, such as, 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: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2410.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 467.0 441.139720559 106% => OK
Chars per words: 5.16059957173 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.64867537961 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.91549285432 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.45182012848 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 754.2 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 66.8431413098 57.8364921388 116% => OK
Chars per sentence: 126.842105263 119.503703932 106% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.5789473684 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.47368421053 5.70786347227 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.280844813651 0.218282227539 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0924093651782 0.0743258471296 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0923109458845 0.0701772020484 132% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.159104449615 0.128457276422 124% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0957665384861 0.0628817314937 152% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.75 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 116.0 98.500998004 118% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.