|
3. The following appeared in a memorandum issued by a large citys council on the arts. In a recent citywide poll, fifteen 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 citys 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 citys art museums will also start to decrease. Thus some of the citys funds for supporting the arts should be reallocated to public television. Discuss how well reasoned... etc. 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: attendance at the citys art museum has increased proportionally with the increases in visual-arts program viewing on public television, and public television is being threatened by severe cuts in corporate funding. While 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. | 
