RAW Ratings Steadily Declining and Potential Ways to Save Them

News is out that the ratings for RAW are in a steady decline. This past week did a 2.7 or a 2.3, depending on who you ask. The 2.7 was reported by F4Wonline and the 2.3 was from PWTorch. The 2.7 figure seems more in line with what RAW has been doing as of late. They did a 2.8 the week before. It's hard to believe there would be a drop all the way down to a 2.3. So what's the problem? Why are viewers not tuning in?

There are a couple of things to take into consideration here. The new fall season of network television shows kicked off last week. That's a big time for the networks and it definitely takes away potential viewers. Another big issue is the return of Monday Night Football on ESPN. The Packers-Bears game was reportedly the 5th most watched cable television program of all time. That's a pretty damn good accomplishment and no doubt played a big factor in RAW scoring such a low rating. I know I spent the majority of my Monday night watching the Bears game. So what can the WWE do to help keep their show competitive on Monday night's?

• Have John Cena lose to Wade Barrett at Hell in a Cell and join Nexus. Promote the hell out of it. By making him join but not having him turn heel, there would be a million different storyline possibilities. They could literally spend hours of TV time with Nexus forcing him to do their bidding and they could spend a ton of time teasing his rebellion. Or they could even make it interesting by having him join and gradually making it seem more and more like he's enjoying being with them and start a slow turn only to reverse it at the last minute. There are a ton of things that could be done with it.
  
• Make it public that they plan on unifying all the titles. The word is continuing to spread that it's going to happen, most likely at WrestleMania 27 next year. If they are going to do it then get the word out now and play some storylines off of that. Again, a ton they could do with it. It also leads into the obvious next idea.
• Merge the two brands and make it a big deal. There are plenty of reasons to not do this, I'll admit that but the gains outweigh the loss. The move to SyFy would be an even bigger deal if they were actually putting their big stars on the program on a weekly basis. The unifying of the WWE and World Heavyweight title could provide no less than 8 guys with a storyline and if they were really smart about it they could weave it into smaller storylines for each guy. Subplots could be going on everywhere and with everyone. It would be tough to keep up with but worth the time.
  
• Ditch the mystery GM idea. Now. Edge elbow dropping a computer while the computer supposedly talked to him was one of the dumbest segments we've ever seen on RAW. That's the kind of thing that actively will make someone change the channel. Honestly, when you are sitting there with the choice of a good football game or Edge having a back and forth with a laptop, what are you going to choose? Exactly. The sad thing is, they could have actually done this to get heat for a few wrestlers if they did it properly. Of course they didn't. The right way to go about having a ridiculous gimmick like that is to use a wrestler to openly admit that it's a ridiculous gimmick and mock it relentlessly on TV. They never did that. All we ever got were guys looking mildly annoyed when that stupid sound would go off.
  
• Put the title on someone new. At this point I don't even mind who it is, as long as it's not John Cena, Randy Orton, Sheamus or Triple H. The idea that they could turn Randy Orton into a modern day version of Stone Cold Steve Austin was doomed from the start. Especially when they had him out there posing with the title and smiling like a kid in a candy store at the end of Night of Champions because they mismanaged the timing of the show. He's a great wrestler but his talent and charisma aren't over enough to justify having him headline 80 percent of the PPV's the past few years. Even Stone Cold got old after a while. That briefcase that Miz is carrying around? Might be time to cash it in.
  

There are plenty of other ideas that are floating around as to what can be done to make RAW competitive with the new crop of shows and MNF. Jim Ross returning and even a move to a different night of the week have been thrown about. Above are a few of my thoughts. What are yours? How would you improve ratings for RAW?