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 business manager of a television station claims that the program should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level, and suggests several reasons that seem to uphold his/her claim. However, the memorandum is rife with holes and assumptions, which need to be eliminated in order for the business manager to maintain his/her claim with clear warrant. Such flaws will be discussed with further details below.
First of all, the author assumes that the complaints received were mainly about less devotion to weather news. However, he/she needs to clarify exactly what the complaints were about. Maybe it actually contradicts to the author's assumption and was actually about the news program covering less national news and more on weather and local news. Maybe a war had been occurring in certain regions and people were interested in listening to this news, when the national news suddenly stopped airing and moved on to weather and local news. Or, maybe late-night viewers favored national news because they were already informed with local news through other news programs.
Furthermore, the author needs to clairfy the numerical amounts of complaints the news program received and who were filing complaints. For example, even if the unsatisfaction is mainly about the coverage of weather and local news, if there were in total five complaints among thousands of viewers, then the complaints would be negligible enough. Moreover, there is also a possibility that the complaints were allowed to be filed anonymously, and one viewer was filing the same complaints multiple times. Maybe this certain person liked getting attention or liked the feeling of being able to manipulate other people, and filed complaints in order to pursue his/her desire.
Secondly, the author reasons that advertising buisness canceled their contract due to the alteration in the coverage of weather and local news. However, this is clearly a wrong indication because there could be multiple reasons adversiting businesses canceling their contracts. Maybe the advertising businesses weren't able to afford the expensive advertising fees and had to retract, regardless of the alteration. Moreover, the adversiting businesses could have newly developed a product that is not suitable for late-night viewers. Maybe they need to advertise baby products targeting young mothers, who are highly unlikely to be staying up late.
Last but not least, the author assumes that the loss of viewers in the late-night program is due to the alteration in the coverage and advertising contracts being retracted. However, maybe the majority of the late-night viewers prefer to watch the news online, instead of turning on the television. Because of advancement technology, people are allowed to watch scraps of news through various online news platforms, which could be much more expedient than offline news programs. If so, then the business manager would have to considering expanding the business to online news platforms, instead of being concerned about the alteration in the coverage of weather and local news.
To sum up, even though the business manager's claim might seem plausible, through thorough investigation and reading the memorandum from various points of view, it is confirmed that his/her claim is clearly unwarranted. In order for the author to maintain his/her claim with upholding evidences, he/she would have to eliminate the flaws of making haste assumptions and indications, providing lack of clear and substantial information, and lacking of thorough investigation.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 10 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 566 350
No. of Characters: 2957 1500
No. of Different Words: 246 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.878 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.224 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.68 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 221 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 189 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 119 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 79 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.609 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.694 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.609 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.332 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.332 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.163 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 221, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...t. Maybe it actually contradicts to the authors assumption and was actually about the n...
^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 312, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: weren't
...racts. Maybe the advertising businesses werent able to afford the expensive advertisin...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, for example, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 30.0 19.6327345309 153% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 23.0 11.1786427146 206% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 78.0 55.5748502994 140% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3027.0 2260.96107784 134% => OK
No of words: 558.0 441.139720559 126% => OK
Chars per words: 5.4247311828 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.86024933743 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7430766946 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 251.0 204.123752495 123% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.44982078853 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 917.1 705.55239521 130% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.0876538093 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.608695652 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2608695652 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.78260869565 5.70786347227 101% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.357095207776 0.218282227539 164% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.112053679159 0.0743258471296 151% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0906944499731 0.0701772020484 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.179977999333 0.128457276422 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.102730892447 0.0628817314937 163% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.2 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.45 12.5979740519 115% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.7 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 137.0 98.500998004 139% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.