Please score my Argument task

[lshelton1291]

Argument: 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."

There are many obvious flaws in this argument, but the most blatent ones are the fact that there could be other reasons the advertisers decided to cancel their contracts, the number of complaints should be taken into account, and the time line of the complaints are all important factors to consider. I will now discuss in further detail the problems with this argument.

Advertising companies could have several reasons for pulling their contracts with this news station. They could have another news station that they like better; one that has more professional news anchors and more interesting new stories. Another station could be offering advertisement for a cheaper price, enticing the ad companies to take their contracts to the cheaper station. The advertisement company could also have an issue with the management at this news station. There are many other reasons that the advertisement company pulled their contracts from this particular news station besides the fact that this program devoted less time to weather and local news.

Another fallacy of this argument is the complaints that were received. The argument does not tell the reader anything about the people who complained. There could have been only one person who complained a bunch of times, or there could be a hundred people who complained. We just do not have enough information to change an entire news station based off the fact that there were complaints with the amount of coverage of weather and local news.

Finally, this argument talks about the time period that these complaints were made. While the time period that these complaints came in, could correlate to the increased amount of time devoted to national news, this news station could have been receiving complaints long before that period as well. This is an important issue to note because if the people making the complaints have always had an issue with the weather and local news coverage, the fact that more time has now been devoted to national news could have nothing to do with why they are complaining. They could have been complaining about the quality of the news being presented, or the anchors who are presenting the news. We do not know how long these people have been complaining and for what reasons.

There are many serious issues with this argument, such as the fact that the advertisers could have pulled their contracts for several other reasons than the one stated in the argument. Or the fact that we do not know who these complaints came from, or the time line of the complaints and the reasons behind them. For these reasons we cannot draw any sort of conclusions from the information given.

[tommywallach]

Sorry, but we aren't grading essays on here anymore. Good luck!

-t