▶ Your Answer :The author of memorandum reasons that to
attract more viewers to their late-night news program and avoid further revenue
decreasing, they have to restore the time for local news and weather as they
did past. The manager does it from the following reasons: First, they changed
time allocation intending to more on national news and less on whether and
local news. Second, most complaints they gave from the viewers are about their
coverage of weather and local news. Finally, their change in coverage coincided
with cancelling advertisement of local businesses. However, this line of
inference is dubious in many points. First, the threshold problem of the
argument is that though local businesses canceled their advertisement, it might
not be the case that the station’s advertisement revenue is not reduced. It is
equally possible that national businesses compensated the loss or gave more
money not just enough for offset the deficit from locals but also enough for
additional revenue. Or, since they sell advertisement almost all for nationals,
locals cancel does not huge effect on the station’s revenue. This is because
the writer of memorandum assumes that the only buyer of their advertisement is
one from local. Thus, to evaluate the argument, we need to know whether most of
the revenue came from. If it is from nationals, the argument will be more
validated.
Next, the argument reason that if they go
back to the former level of time for local and weather, they could attract more
viewers to their new program, since most complaints they received are concerned
with the station’s coverage of them. However, this does not mean that these
complaints indicate reality. It is possible that they complained like this: the
station must have spent more time on national news. Or, it is equally possible
that, in spite of most complaints, most viewers of the station are satisfied
with the change. To assess the reasoning, hence, we need evidence indicating
whether the complaints are many enough to represent whole viewers and whether
complains are about demerits of the change. If the evidence is given to us,
then the argument is more strengthened.
Also, granted that all the evidence
suggested above is given and validate the argument, however, it is not followed
the conclusion of the argument. It might be that the station is at the rural
area and almost all viewers in that area and viewers from no other area view
the program, so whatever they do, their rating is limited by the population of
the small area. It is because the argument assumes that their prospective
viewers are large enough for increasing enough. To assure it, we need evidence
saying whether how many prospective viewers in their area are. Without this
kind of evidence, the reasoning is unpersuasive.
In sum, the writer of memorandum reasons that to
improve their level of viewers and revenue of advertisement, they should
restore time for local news and weather as before change. However, to assess
this line of reasoning, we need further evidence: where their revenue comes most,
whether complaints are representative and are about negative effect of change,
and whether their prospect viewers are large enough. Without these evidence,
the argument could be harmed. |