Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news. During this time period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather with our station's coverage of weather

The business managers at the television station are facing revenue problems as local businesses have cancelled their advertising contracts. Their plan to reverse the trend needs to be examined in light of more evidence in order to justify their arguments.

The business mangaers implicity assumes that the loss of advertising contract is due from lack of weather and local news. These two events are happening at the same time, but are they correlated? There is lack of proof to establish this causation. There are many other reasons that local businesses have withdrawn their contracts. As the internet and mobile have become more popular, businesses are shifting their advertising budget from TV to online. Could this be a reason instead? The managers should investigate further in order to validate their argument. For instances, they can survey their customers to better understand the reasons behind their cancellations.

Additionally, the business mangers need to view the business contracts as a whole with the television station. Since there are fewer viewers in late-night news than prime-time news, it is possible that the local businesses have shifted their contracts to prime-time to reach a bigger audience. If this is the case, then station total advertising revenue from local businesses have not decreased. Thus, advertising revenue might not be an issue in the first place.

Moreover, they also claim that the return of local and weather news will increase viewership. While there are more compliants regarding coverage of weather and local news, there is no evidence that viewership of late-night news have decreased. The managers needs to illustrate the link between local and weather news and the number of viewers.

Additionally, the managers statement of "more compliants" lacks quantification. How many more complaints are there? How is this number relative to the number of viewers. It is possible that the number of viewers and the number of compliants both increased. If this the case, then the premise that there are more compliant is rendered invalid since the proportion of compliants relative to the viewers could have stayed the same or even decreased. A more comprehensive study of the type of news that the viewers are interested should be conducted first before the business mangers make any decisions.

As it is, the mangers have no real evidence that indicate returning to more local and weather news will increase number of viewers or drive up advertising revenue. Before they make their arguments, they should conduct surveys of both viewers and local businesses to suppor their claim.