The argument states that the cut in the funding that supports public television will result in a decrease in the attendance of city's art museums, and so avers that it would be convenient to reallocate to public television a part of the money used to support arts. This argument is full of deficiencies and the conclusion is drawn without taking into account the consequences of the suggested operation.The following appeared in a memorandum issued by a large city's council on the arts:
"In a recent citywide poll, 15 percent more residents said that they watch television programs about the visual arts than was the case in a poll conducted five years ago. During these past five years, the number of people visiting our city's art museums has increased by a similar percentage. Since the corporate funding that supports public television, where most of the visual arts programs appear, is now being threatened with severe cuts, we can expect that attendance at our city's art museums will also start to decrease. Thus some of the city's funds for supporting the arts should be reallocated to public television."
Firstly, the author assumes that the increase in the number of people visiting art museums is a direct consequence of the increase in the number of residents watching television programs about visual arts. This statement is flawed because, as it stands, both these trends could be due to an external cause, such as a rising in people's interest to visual arts, which brings them to watch this kind of television program as well as to visit museums. If this were true, cutting the funding that supports public television wouldn't have impact on the attendance of museums.
Secondly, the comparison between the data referring to residents watching television programs and those related to the ones visiting museums, are not well substantiated. In fact, if the average number of the viewers of television programs amounts to many thousands while that of the museum attendants is just about some hundreds, the increase of the percentage of these quantities would imply non-comparable numbers of people, and the similarity between such percentages could be due to chance rather than to a real connection between them.
Thirdly, it is not clear what the speaker expect it would be obtained reducing the funds for supporting the arts in favor of those for public television. If it is true that allocating more money to public television could help to steady people's interest for art programs, it is still true that cutting the funding for art museums would reduce people's attraction to them, and, since the interest for art could be connected to the interest for what is kept in the museums, cutting these funds could result, finally, also in a decrease in the number of the viewers of television programs.
The authors could have strenghtened this argument providing stronger evidence that the increase in the attendance of city's art museums is a direct consequence of the increase in the interest for television programs about visual arts. The argument could also have been reinforced by the use of numbers substantiating the analogy between the increase in the percentages. As it stands, anyway, the argument is flawed for the reasons indicated.
