GRE argument essay

[arch97]

Please review my essay and let me know of the changes that should be made. Thank you.

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.

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The following argument is flawed for a number of reasons primarily due to various assumptions that are being stated without proper evidence or justification.

First of all, the author is making the following argument based on the data he/she has acquired from the past year. Due to the increased airtime of the national news in the late-night news program, weather and local news have been given less coverage. And it was during this time, they received complaints from the viewers. The author is making an unwarranted assumption by expanding the coverage of weather and local news. We do not know what has changed over the past year. Perhaps, the channel viewers have changed or there has been an economic crisis which led to the cancellation of advertisement contracts by local businesses or perhaps the viewers’ taste for various programs may have changed. The author does not really provide any evidence of this sort to make an informed decision.

The author also fails to provide any justification on the correlation between the weather/local news reports and advertising contracts by local businesses. It might be possible that these local businesses have found cheaper or more economical channels for their advertisements. Perhaps they are in a financial crisis so they have to cut short their budget for advertisements. So, increasing the coverage of local news and weather reports may not necessarily lead to getting more advertising revenues, unless the author presents some evidence regarding the connection between the two.

Finally, the author fails to specify the nature of the complaints received from the viewers. According to the author’s argument, the complaints were “concerning” the station’s coverage of weather and local news reports. Nothing really is mentioned what the concerns were actually about. Was it that the viewers were not really happy with the quality of the report? Or is it about the news content or how far the reported news is actually true? None of these questions can be answered without proper evidence. The author has simply concluded that just because there were “concerns” regarding the local news and weather report, the station has to decrease the airtime of national news in the late-night news program. Therefore, proper evidence has to be cited before this assumption can be justified.

Because the author makes so many unwarranted assumptions, he/she fails to make a convincing case of increasing the local news/weather report during the late-night news program.