GMAT Prep Discussions 2019

can anyone please evaluate my argument essay? This is my first attempt. Thanks in advance! 

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 time 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 just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level."

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.

response:

In the memorandum stated above, the author concluded that the paucity of local news and weather update affects badly on the number of audience of the late-night news program. However, to evaluate the argument properly, three questions need to be answered. 

First of all,  who are the major portion of the audience of the news program? If the majority of the viewers are generally aware of local news, then they will naturally be inclined to listening to national issues in the program. on the contrary, if majority of the viewers or listeners are from labor community, they might be in need of concentrating more on the local news rather than national affairs. For instance, if a driver who drives a truck containing vegetables would be more keen to listen about the current weather update in order to make decisions regarding driving on that particular night. The lack of clarity about the type of audience makes the conclusion of the memorandum ambiguous.

Secondly, does the cancelled advertisement contract have any correlation with  broadcasting local news and weather update?  Normally those who advertises through late-night news programs typically advertises for a wide range of products. however, it is very important to know about the dependency of the advertised product on weather and local news. For example, if an umbrella company posts advertisement about their recently improved umbrellas in the time of heavy rainfall, it will be beneficial only for the time when there is actually heavy rainfall and this is directly contingent upon the fact that the late-night news actually broadcasts weather update. Otherwise, the argument will not hold true.

Lastly, there is no clear indication about the local conditions which are more important news than any national issues. Sometimes, a local event is far more important in terms of news than a national event. The argument fails to provide any instance upon which the relative importance of the local and national news can be evaluated. 

From the above discussions we can infer that, if the author answer the above mentioned questions properly with more convincing evidences, the conclusion of the argument can be properly evaluated.