Two years ago, radio station WCQP in Rockville decided to increase the number of call-in programs that it broadcast; since that time, its share of the radio audience in the Rockville listening area has increased significantly. Given WCQP’s recent success with call-in advice programming, and citing a nationwide survey indicating that many radio listeners are quite interested in such programs, the station manager of KICK in Medway recommends that KICK include more call-in advice programs in an attempt to gain a larger audience share in its listening area.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The writer of the argument recommends that if Kick wants to get more audiences, it should produce more call-in programs; however, the writer's recommendation cannot be accepted as it is because it rests on a number of premises for the support of which some vital questions are to be answered.
The first problem with the argument is that the writer refers to a survey but does not indicate how many people took part in the survey reported. The question is whether enough people participated in this survey. As you know, in a survey the greater the number of people in the sample, the more reliable and valid the findings are. Maybe in this survey only ten people took part; hence, the findings of such a survey are neither reliable nor valid. Even if it is assumed that enough people participated in the survey, there is still another problem with the sample. In a survey, the findings can be generalized to the target population if the sample used is representative of the concerned population in terms of age, sex, social class, culture, etc.; however, one can ask whether the nationwide radio listeners were representative of Medway listeners. It follows that, the findings of this survey cannot be applied to the members of the Medway listening area without reservations.
Another problem with the argument is that the author assumes that considerable increasing in the number of WCQP audiences has happened because the number of call-in programs has increased; however, whether this increase actually happened because of more call-in programs is questionable. For example, maybe increase in the WCQP's share of radio audiences in the Rockville listening area happened because some radio station decided to stop their program; hence, some of their audiences had to choose a new station, so they selected WCQP.
A third problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that things remain the same over the years; however, whether this is true is questionable. Maybe two years ago call-in programs were favorable but now they lose their attraction because many station make numerous call-in programs.
In the final analysis, the writer's recommendation cannot taken to be correct because, as it was shown in the body paragraphs above, there are a number of questions left unanswered. The recommendation can only be accepted if the concerned questions are all addressed.
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- Two years ago, radio station WCQP in Rockville decided to increase the number of call-in programs that it broadcast; since that time, its share of the radio audience in the Rockville listening area has increased significantly. Given WCQP’s recent success 30
argument 1 -- not OK. here you need to accept that a nationwide survey is true, but the nationwide survey may not apply to KICK.
argument 2 -- not exactly. better: 'the success among listeners with increasing the number of call-in programs of WCQP radio station was 2 years ago. The author does not provide information about the listeners requirements of then and now regarding call-in programs. It can be possible that 2 years ago there weren't much programs of this type, and this new idea caught up very quickly. Or it might be as well true that in the area of broadcasting of WCQP there was no other radio station with this type of program and that's why it was so successful.'
argument 3 -- not OK. suggested: the author does not presents a throughout comparison between Rockville and Medway, impairing his conclusion that the same strategy would work in both cities.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: ? out of 6
Category: ? Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 390 350
No. of Characters: 1940 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.444 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.974 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.687 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 155 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 114 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 70 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.857 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.746 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.786 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.383 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.643 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.116 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5