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 assumptions made by the business manager may be true and his recommendation may be valid. Nevertheless, the premises of his recommendation are not sound and weak.
The manager associates the loss of viewers and advert revenue to increased time given to national news in the station’s late-night news program. However, the manager fails to provide the context and reasons why more time was given to national news. Is there a national election coming up or are there urgent national issues that are occuring compared to local issues? A background would help evaluate the manager’s arguments. Also, to support his argument, the manager should compare viewership of the late night news program before and after more time was allocated to national news. If the station has lost a signifcant number of viewers, the station should ascertain the reasons for the loss before proposing a general recommendation for all news programs rather than just the late-night news program.
The manager’s second assumption and claim is that viewers complaints suggest that the station should expand coverage of weather and local news. This is a fair point. However, the manager fails to provide statistics on the number of viewers that have complained and the type of their complaints. If the station has 100,000 viewers, what number of the 100,000 complained about the time devoted to national news and requested for the coverage of local news? The manager has to prove that viewers want more local content in their news program for his claim to be valid.
Third, the manager’s association of the loss of advert revenue to the increased time given to national news is flawed. This is because other factors may cause businesses to stop advertising. For instance, local businesses could resort to inexpensive social media tools for adverts or may have found the Station’s advert rates too costly hence the cancellation. To bolster his recommendation, the manager should provide evidence that businesses cancelled their contracts with the station because of the reduced time given to local news and weather coverage.
The manager also has to reevaluate his claim that more time should be allocated to local news and weather coverage for all the station’s news programs because late night news programs are different from other news programs. He has to provide cogent proofs that viewers want increased local news coverage for all the news programs and not just the late night news program.
In conclusion, whilst the manager’s argument may be valid, he fails to support his claims with proofs such as number of viewers who have complained about news coverage and the reasons why businesses cancelled their contract. To strengthen his recommendation, the business manager has to state convincing proofs
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Sentence: The manager's second assumption and claim is that viewers complaints suggest that the station should expand coverage of weather and local news.
Description: A noun, plural, common is not usually followed by a noun, plural, common
Suggestion: Refer to viewers and complaints
Sentence: If the station has lost a signifcant number of viewers, the station should ascertain the reasons for the loss before proposing a general recommendation for all news programs rather than just the late-night news program.
Error: signifcant Suggestion: significant
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 450 350
No. of Characters: 2295 1500
No. of Different Words: 168 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.606 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.1 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.619 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 171 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 140 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.429 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.715 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.389 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.561 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.164 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5