17) The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station.
To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format. The decline has occurred despite population growth in our listening area, but that growth has resulted mainly from people moving here after their retirement. We must make listeners of these new residents. We could switch to a music format tailored to their tastes, but a continuing decline in local sales of recorded music suggests limited interest in music. Instead we should change to a news and talk format, a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
93) The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station.
WWAC must change from its current rock-music format because the number of listeners has been declining, even though the population in our listening area has been growing. The population growth has resulted mainly from people moving to our area after their retirement, and we must make listeners of these new residents. But they seem to have limited interest in music: several local stores selling recorded music have recently closed. Therefore, just changing to another kind of music is not going to increase our audience. Instead, we should adopt a news-and-talk format, a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
C1: To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format.
G1: The decline has occurred despite population growth in our listening area, but that growth has resulted mainly from people moving here after their retirement.
C2: We must make listeners of these new residents.
C3: We could switch to a music format tailored to their tastes,
G2:but a continuing decline in local sales of recorded music suggests limited interest in music.
C4: Instead we should change to a news and talk format,
G3: a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area."
C3 and C4 are two different solutions
A1 (G1, C2): The radio station should target at the new residents in order to attract more listeners.
A2 (G2, C3): Decline in local sales of recorded music suggest that there is limited interest in radio music.
A3 (G3, C4): The increasing popularity of the news and talk format means that the radio should switch to this format.
model-essay
The manager argues that WWAC should switch to news and talk to boost the size of the audience. He refers to the fact that population has grown due to more retired people moving in, the decline in sales of recorded music and the increasing popularity of news and talk in the area. We need to collect more evidence about these issues in order to evaluate his argument.
To begin with, we need more evidence to decide if targeting the retired people is the right strategy for attracting more listeners. More information is needed about the general interest of the retired people in radio programs. If these people do not like to listen to radio programs but spend most of their time watching TV or surfing the Internet, attempts to make listeners out of them will not be successful. On the other hand, we need to look into the reasons why the listener numbers had decreased. Perhaps the radio station has recently lost a large number of young listeners due to the resignation of a popular DJ. If this is the case, WWAC should focus more on young listeners rather than retired people.
We also need to collect more information about the potential of music radio programs for atttracting more listeners. More efforts should be made to investigate why the sales of recorded music have declined and decide whether the reason is related to the popularity of music. Perhaps people are not willing to buy recorded music because of the declining disposable income as a result of poor performance of local economy. Then the radio programs featuring music may be attractive as listening to radio is free. Also, maybe the decline in sales is due to fewer young people buying the recorded music, a fact unrelated to the retired people.