I don’t think this is a particularly difficult question, and if you’re doing it the right way, it’s a really quick and painless question. But there are some speedbumps here if you’re not focused on the right issues.
The semi-trap in this question: if you’re distracted by the idiom, you’re missing the point. In real life, I don’t know anybody – including any of my friends who are native English speakers and/or professional editors – who knows or cares whether the correct idiom is “targeted toward”, “targeted to”, “targeted at”, or “targeted on.” It’s a dumb thing for the GMAT to test, in my opinion. But the GMAT doesn't care what I think.
More importantly: if you see an idiom split and you’re not 100% sure what the right idiom is, look for other stuff. Sure, sometimes there’s no way to escape the idiom. But if they give you an opportunity to “work around” the idiom, please take it. (More on idioms -- and why they might not be worth studying -- in
this article.)
And there’s another potential distraction here: the word “their” looks ambiguous, since it could refer to “industries” or “stars” – and since “industries” is the most recent plural noun, the pronoun doesn’t look ideal. But pronoun ambiguity isn’t ALWAYS wrong on the GMAT:
click here for an old thread on this topic,
click here for an official example of acceptable pronoun ambiguity -- and we also covered this issue in
a YouTube video.
And in this situation, the pronoun is irrelevant, anyway: “their” appears in all five answer choices, in exactly the same place.
Bottom line: if you didn’t get sidetracked by the pronouns or idiom, you win.
Quote:
A. Targeted toward the crucial 18-49 demographic, each of the television network’s new scripted dramas feature attractive, bankable stars both from the music and modeling industries, known more for their good looks than for their acting abilities.
“Each” is singular, so “each… feature” is wrong. Plus, “both from… and modeling” is not parallel. We don’t even need to think about the idiom or the pronouns. Eliminate (A).
Quote:
B. Targeted at the crucial 18-49 demographic, each of the television network’s new scripted dramas features attractive, bankable stars from both the music and modeling industries, known more for their good looks than for their acting abilities.
Both the parallelism and subject-verb agreement look good here. Let’s keep (B).
Quote:
C. Targeted at the crucial 18-49 demographic, each of the television network’s new scripted dramas features attractive, bankable stars both from the music and modeling industries, known more for their good looks than for their abilities as actors.
Subject-verb is fine here, but the parallelism error is the same as in (A). We can still ignore the idiom and the pronouns. Eliminate (C).
Quote:
D. Targeted to the crucial 18-49 demographic, each of the television network’s new scripted dramas feature attractive, bankable stars from both the music and modeling industries, known more for their good looks than for their abilities as actors.
The parallelism is acceptable here, but “each… feature” doesn’t work. And we still have no reason to worry about the idiom. (D) is gone.
Quote:
E. Targeted to the crucial 18-49 demographic, each of the television network’s new scripted dramas features attractive, bankable stars both from the music and modeling industries, known more for their good looks than for their acting abilities.
Parallelism error again, so (E) is gone, and (B) is our winner.
I have one small query.
in the line "known more for their good looks than for their acting abilities" is pointing to?
although every option is same in this aspect, but just for my clarity i would like to know why we don't have an ambiguity as