While handsets get hyped, a typical U.S. consumer watches more than 5 ...
While handsets get hyped, a typical U.S. consumer watches more than 5 hours of TV a day, according to Nielsen, and even younger adults from 18 to 24 years of age—the supposed digital generation—spend 3 hours and 30 minutes watching TV daily compared to only 49 minutes on the Web and 20 minutes on mobile phones. Therefore, since most media is still consumed through TV, the claims that TV as a medium for advertising has lost some importance are certainly incorrect.
Which of the following must be true for the above argument to hold?
Argument Analysis
Pre-Thinking
Conclusion Clarification
The author concludes that the claims that TV as a medium for advertising has lost some importance are certainly incorrect. In other words, TV as a medium for advertisement has not lost any importance. The conclusion is based on the fact that most of the media is still consumed through TV as consumers spend more time on TV in comparison to web and mobile.
Pre-Thinking Approach
To pre-think assumptions, let’s see how we can falsify this conclusion. To do so, we will look at the logical structure, focusing on linkage 1 and the conclusion. We will understand the condition under which the conclusion is falsified. The assumption then will be that the condition does not exist.
Linkage#1 –
- Falsification Condition: Even if we know that a person spends more time on watching TV than on web and mobile, can we be sure that the person actually watches the advertisements displayed on the TV? What if the person switches the channel during an advertisement? In this case, even though he is spending more time on TV than on web and mobile, he is not watching any advertisements. Hence, the conclusion that TV as a medium for advertisement has not lost any importance doesn’t hold. Another important point to note here is that “losing importance” is a comparative statement. What if the population used to watch 6 hours of TV before? In this case too, the conclusion will not hold.
- Assumption: The amount of advertisement consumption through a medium is directly proportion to the amount of media consumption on that medium, i.e. when a person spends time on TV, he/ she does spend time watching advertisements.
With this understanding in mind, let's take a look at the option statements.
Answer Choices
A
The number of advertisements that can be shown per unit of time spent is not significantly greater in TVs than in other mediums.
Incorrect - Irrelevant
The negation of this statement provides strength to the argument at hand. Clearly, this choice does not provide any support to the conclusion and hence cannot be the assumption of the argument.
B
The impact of an advertisement served on a medium is directly proportional to the amount of time the advertisement is displayed/shown.
Incorrect - Irrelevant
This option implies that if an advertisement is of a longer time duration it would have more impact and vice-versa. However, the author doesn’t make any connection between the probability of the featuring of such advertisements and the total time spent on consuming media through a particular medium.
C
The importance of a medium of advertisement does not depend only on the time spent by the consumers on that medium.
Incorrect - Opposite
To the extent this choice has any impact on the argument, it weakens the same as it now opens up the possibility that there may be other factors as well that determine the importance of a medium of advertisement, thereby potentially diminishing the importance of the only factor (time spent) cited by the author.
D
Most of the time spent watching TV these days is not spent on watching recorded shows which allows skipping of content.
Correct
This choice is written along the lines of our pre-thinking per Linkage #1. The claim is that people don’t like watching advertisements. By eliminating the possibility that more time spent on TVs is spent watching recorded shows, which allow skipping of content, it defends the argument against a potential weakener.
E
None of the advertisers have recently significantly reduced the amount they spent on advertising on TV.
Incorrect - Irrelevant
This option doesn’t help us conclude anything about the importance of TV as a medium of advertisement. Even if some of the advertisers have significantly reduced their spending on TV, TV as a medium of advertisement may still retain its importance.