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 canceled 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.
In the memorandum, the business manager proposed the restoration of the time allocated to the weather and local news segment in order to attract more viewers and avoid losing more advertising revenues. The manager reaches this conclusion by citing complaints from viewers about their weather and local news coverage and the cancellation of advertising contracts by local businesses. However, to properly evaluate the author’s recommendation, three evidences must be provided.
First, the manager mentions the TV station has devoted more time to covering national news and less time covering weather and local news. However, the manager fails to mention the percentage increase and decrease of the respective sections of their late-night news program. Perhaps, the weather and local news segment’s duration was cut by half; if that’s true, then the manager’s argument holds. Or perhaps, the time for national news was increased by a minute and the weather and local news duration was also reduced by a minute, then this accounts for no significant change. If the latter is the case, then there may be another reason chasing customers away and the manager’s current stance is seriously weakened.
Secondly, the manager states there were complaints from viewers about the TV station’s coverage of weather and local news during the same period, and wrongly conclude it’s tied to the reduced time frame of the weather and local news segment. While this may be true, it is also possible that it isn’t. Perhaps, the complaints were about the quality of the weather and news segment and not the reduced time. It’s also possible the complaints were about the efficiency of the news anchor(s) and not the time frame of the news. If both of these are true, then the manager’s argument doesn’t hold water.
The manager further mentions that several local businesses have canceled their advertising contract with them. Here, the manager wrongly assumes the complaints about the weather and local news as the reason for this. However, further scrutiny suggests this may not be case. Perhaps, there is a new TV station in town with cheaper advertising rates than them, or their clients realized advertising with them hasn’t been producing the intended effects and they decided to move to a TV station with a wider reach and larger viewership. It’s also possible that the local businesses are experiencing financial troubles and have to cut back on their expenses, hence the reason for canceling their advertising contracts. Even worse, some may have closed down or moved to an entirely new city. If any of these are true, then the author’s argument is seriously undermined.
In conclusion, the manager’s current proposal of restoring the former duration of the weather and local news segment to attract new customers and avoid losing more advertising contract is deeply flawed because they are based on several baseless assumptions. For the manager’s recommendation to be strengthened, he/she needs to provide a detailed insight into the current situation, perhaps in form of a detailed report on customer satisfaction.
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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: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 503 350
No. of Characters: 2548 1500
No. of Different Words: 210 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.736 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.066 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.616 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 187 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 166 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 101 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.952 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.727 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.364 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.541 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, while, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 26.0 11.1786427146 233% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2650.0 2260.96107784 117% => OK
No of words: 499.0 441.139720559 113% => OK
Chars per words: 5.31062124248 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.72634191566 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74843251868 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 214.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.428857715431 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 799.2 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.2605362839 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.454545455 119.503703932 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.6818181818 23.324526521 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.90909090909 5.70786347227 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => 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: 0.387319564585 0.218282227539 177% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.126477255188 0.0743258471296 170% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.121837980181 0.0701772020484 174% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.233469131975 0.128457276422 182% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.128694559459 0.0628817314937 205% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.81 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.27 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 98.500998004 114% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.