In this argument the author concludes that the city should allocate some of its arts
funding to public television. The conclusion is based on two facts: (1) attendance at the
city's art museum has increased proportionally with the increases in visual-arts program
viewing on public television, and (2) public television is being threatened by severe cuts
in corporate funding. White this argument is somewhat convincing, a few concerns need
to be addressed.
To begin with, the argument depends on the assumption that increased exposure to
the visual arts on television, mainly public television, has caused a similar increase in
local art-museum attendance. However, just because increased art-museum attendance
can be statistically correlated with similar increases in television viewing of visual-arts
programs, this does not necessarily mean that the increased television viewing of arts is
the cause of the rise in museum attendance.
Moreover, perhaps there are other factors relevant to increased interest in the local
art museum; for instance, maybe a new director had procured more interesting, exciting
acquisitions and exhibits during the period when museum attendance increased, in
addition, the author could be overlooking a common cause of both increases. It is
possible that some larger social or cultural phenomenon is responsible for greater public
interest in both television arts programming and municipal art museums.
To be fair, however, we must recognize that the author's assumption is a special
case of a more general one that television viewing affects people's attitudes and
behavior. Common sense and observation tells me that this is indeed the case. After all,
advertisers spend billions of dollars on television ad time because they trust this
assumption as well.
In conclusion, I am somewhat persuaded by this author's line of reasoning. The
argument would be strengthened if the author were to consider and rule out other
significant factors that might have caused the increase in visits to the local art museum.