In the above-mentioned memorandum, the business manager of a television station argues that the

viewership of their late night news program is being compromised since they have curtailed the time
designated for the weather and local news and expanded the focus solely on the national news. This
argument, although have the potential to be a solid one and the reasons that he mentioned in his
memorandum can be strong and logical, however, there are a few discrepancies and lacking in these
explanations that make this a weak argument.

Firstly, according to the business manager, they have been receiving complaints regarding their
coverage and most of them are related to their station's coverage of weather and local news.
Although, it is noticeable that most of the complaints are questioning their local and weather news
coverage, but it also proves that there are other complaints as well and we do not know the amount
of all the complaints. It is possible, that complaints regarding other aspects of the news channel may
be more grave highlighting a more pressing issue within their channel.

Secondly, the memorandum states that local businesses that used to advertise during their late night
news program have cancelled their advertising contracts with the channel. There is no evidence that
supports the fact that it happened because of the decrease in time devoted to the weather and local
news. There is a full possibility, that the contracts have been cancelled due to a professional scuffle
between the managing teams of both the news channel and the local business. It is also possible that
there is some negative image of the news channel being disseminated publicly due to the
deliverance of uninformed or bogus information or due to any controversy attached to the news
channel. We simply do not know the reason and the argument fails to shed light on that as well.

Lastly, the fact that the manager also thinks that by restoring the time devoted to weather and local
news to its former level, the lost advertisements will be back and this approach will help them attract
viewers, just shows his lack of judgement. He did not try to examine the real issue, no research has
been done on why the viewership is getting low, and why they are losing advertisements. And even if
some kind of survey or research has been done, there is no evidence of that in the memorandum.
Maybe if he tries to change the structure of their late night news program, or shift the timing of their
news broadcast from late night to a little early, they can possibly attract more viewership. It is also
possible that other news channels are doing a really good job, with fast pace news delivery and in a
more interesting way, we simply do not know anything about these facts and thus, the argument
turns out to be a weak one.

The business manager should look into other matters as well before coming up with this request to
restore the time of national news in order to come up with a strong argument with logical
justifications which would be both believable and can be implemented without any demurs. He
should study and think of other factors which can increase their viewership and advertisements, and
scrutinize any ongoing politics within the staff of the channel. By doing this, he would be able to
bring about a sensible argument which can then be implemented.