Review GRE Argument essay

[Floyd Wilkinson]

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.

 

Since the main claim to the TV station management consisted in decreased time, which was devoted to local news and weather, it is logical, at first site, that the manager suggested to expand the part of weather and local news in order to increase the number of viewers and suchwise to avoid losing any further revenues from advertising, because the advertisers would readily collaborate with the stations with large audience. However, this message from the manager contains several logical inaccuracies and fails in explaining a number of nuances.

First of all, the author of a memorandum didn't betray the exact content of the viewers' complaints. Whether all the complaints from viewers were devoted to the late-night news programs only? Or there were a number of ones, which were concerned, for example, morning news.
Furthermore, the author didn't tell us about the main reasons of complaints. What were they consist in? This text claims, that the viewers were not satisfied with the "coverage of weather and local news" without any details. Whether they found that coverage scarce or overabundant? Or maybe they were not satisfied with the local news content, not the duration. Based on this, we cannot connect the reason, why the viewers sent the complaints, with the fact of distributing the time within late-night news program.
 

Another lapse consists in explanation, what is the real reason of cancelling the advertising contracts? There is a probability, that the advertisers just couldn't continue paying for advertising because of rising charges or they planned to move their advertising to another channel or media, because they were not satisfied with efficiency of advertising by this station. Anyway, we didn't reveal the exact reasons of cancelling the contracts and ways how we can connect it with the necessity of increasing the time for weather and local news.

Finally, in the end of his memorandum the author didn't place the emphasis on what kind of news (morning, daily or late-night) they should to recast "in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues". Therefore, the conclusion of his memorandum looks detached from the rest of his message.

To sum up it's worth saying, that on closer examination of this memorandum a number of inaccuracies can be revealed, which make this message look incoherently. This clearly indicates the necessity of revision of the text in order to be more logically completed and not to cause so many questions.