LR Question 6 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: A film makes a profit if the number of people who see…
QUESTION TYPE: Paradox
FACTS: Films profit if more people see them. So movie executives want to get many people to see their movies. TV executives aren’t as concerned with getting many people to see their shows.
ANALYSIS: It must be the case that TV shows makes profits some other way.
___________
- Irrelevant fluff. You can only watch one movie or TV show at a time, so total audience size is just the number of people watching. Doesn’t matter whether they are repeaters.
- Who cares about movie theatre owners. The stimulus is about the profits of movie and TV executives. They don’t own theatres.
- This is about costs. The stimulus was talking about revenues.
- CORRECT. This explains it. The money comes from sponsors, because people pay to watch TV. And sponsors care about audience quality, not audience quantity.
- This felt tempting to me. But it’s actually a strange answer. We’re talking about all TV shows, not ‘the most popular shows’. And why does it matter whether people pay to watch TV? That doesn’t explain why executives don’t want more people to watch their shows.
More Resources for Paradox Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Paradox questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers paradox questions.
Hi Graeme,
Really love the site, thank you so much – this has been incredibly valuable for me in my studying!
My issue with this answer choice, and why I chose E even though I felt it was not a good AC, is that I felt that purchasing power could also be construed to mean, the total amount that a given group could purchase. Wouldn’t we say that 10000 poor people have more purchasing power than one wealthy person? I understand how this argument doesn’t hold if we are advertising for yachts, but if we are advertising for something inexpensive like dish soap, doesn’t this definition make more sense? I guess I just don’t like the LSAT’s use here of an ambiguous term.
This answer choice just says that the “chief concern” of sponsors is purchasing power, so regardless of how you define purchasing power, this answer choice doesn’t do a good job of explaining why those sponsors wouldn’t want to maximize viewership. What if the total viewership was a secondary concern, but maximizing viewership still led to higher profits? This answer choice does not rule out that possibility.