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.


The author claims that the time devoted to weather and local news should get raised to attract their viewers and advertising revenues during late night news program. Because of the complaints from the viewers regarding less time devoted to weather and local news than national news and cancellation of advertising contracts. This can be explained based on the following assumptions.

Initially, this can be strengthen by assuming that most of the viewers were local people. Hence people wanted to know more news happening around them and this might be a reason for their complaints. Another reason is that, in order to know the weather in their area, many local people are lodging complaints against its less time broadcasting of weather news.

Consequently, based on the first assumption if many people were locals, due to less time of weather and local news, many people might not watch the late night news program. If they didn't watch the late night news program, also they will not watch the advertisements. Hence local businesses won't get any benefits and leads to loss in advertisements expenditure. This might be a reason for the cancellation of local businesses advertising contracts in late night news program.

By keeping these two assumptions, business manager might have planned to increase the time weather and local news which will lead to the increase in the number of viewers watching the program. As a result of increased viewers, they can also regain their advertising contracts from local businesses.