argument97 永不言弃互改小组 第二十八次作业 by 9#

cameo0320UID: 2599448

TOPIC: ARGUMENT97 - The following appeared in a memo from the manager of television station KICK.

"A nationwide survey reveals that a sizeable majority of men would like to see additional sports programs on television. After television station WACK increased its sports broadcasts, its share of the television audience in its viewing area almost doubled. To gain a larger audience share in our area, and thus increase company profits, KICK should also revise its broadcast schedule to include more sports coverage."
WORDS: 386
TIME: 00:28:52
DATE: 2009-03-09 15:56:16

In this argument, the author recommends that KICK should revise its broadcast schedule to include more sports coverage. To support this recommendation, the author cites a nationwide survey as evidence, the argument also point out that WACK enjoy a success after take that measure. However, the argument suffers several flaws.

To begin with, the validity of the survey is doubtful. The author fails to provide sufficient information about how the survey was conducted and lacking information about the number of employees surveyed and the number of respondents. It is possible that there are more men than women responded the survey. Or if the question were leading, people might echo with expected answers, thus the result would be greatly unconvincing. Even if the survey is convincing, it is unreliable to apply the result to the area of KICK. May be in these area, people don not like see sports programs. Without ruling out these explanations, the author cannot draw any conclusion.

Secondly, the author assumes that WACK is analogous to KICK in all respects. For one thing, there is no information show that the increase of WACK's viewing area is due to the alternation of increase its sports broadcasts. Even if it is the policy lead to that result, it does not mean that the same result will become in KICK. It is entirely possible that, the residents in WACK are mainly men while there are more women and children in KICK who do not like sports programs. Without providing more information about these, the author cannot convince me.

Thirdly, the author commits a fallacy of "hasty generalization", revising broadcast schedule is not a bound to bring profits. Our common sense tells us that the main profit resource of television station is advertisements. If the company are not prefer sports programs they will not want to invest in that station, as a result, the station may lost its profit.

To sum up, the argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To bolster it, the author would provide more detail information about the survey, how it was conducted and the number and the structure of the respondents. The author also should show that the condition of the two area are similar. To better evaluate the argument, we also need to know if companies would like to invest on sports programs.