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 complaint

The business manager makes a case for alloting more time to local and weather news on all its news programs. The manager cites complaints from viewers about the local and weather news coverage and the loss of advertising contracts as evidence to support his proposition. However, the manager bases his recommendation on some assumption which if proved untrue, his/her recommendations may not solve the problems the television station faces.

The manager assumes that the reason for the complaint from viewers is as a result of the little time allocated to local and weather news. Perhaps, the viewers are complaining about the quality, or the accuracy of the local and weather news. Maybe the weather man had severally given wrong forcast eg. a dry, sunny week forcasted and the week unfortunately turned out to be very rainy and stormy. This could upset viewers causing them to make complaints. Local businesses may also be dissappointed with such incompetency from the television and withdraw their contracts.

It could also be the case that the local news is biased or inaccurate on certaining political issues, causing complaints from viewers who have stakes in such issues. This may also be the case with local business whose affairs are affected by such political discourse and perhaps the televeision station has been airing political views that are not favorable to these businesses.

The manager does not also give any statistics or figures about the number of complaints he/she received. It may be the case that these complaints are not representative of the city’s view. An example is a situation where the there are multiple complaints from a small number of people. Such complaints cannot be used as the basis for making a recommendation, as they are only the opinions of a few number of people. Also, while some business maybe cancelling their contracts, the author does not say if other business are creating new contracts or mention the kind of business withdrawing their contracts. If it turns out that contracts are being lost from a particular sector of the industry, then making a decision for other business based on a particular industry’s preference may result to grave consequnces for the television.

If the above situations are true then increasing the local and weather news time on not just late night news but on every news program, would not result in increase in viewership or advertisment contracts. In fact, the managers recommendation could achieve the opposite result – more fury from angry views and businesses due to the television station’s incompetence.