With February Sweeps drawing to a close, we’re grabbing our popcorn, flipping on the tube, and…letting out a collective yawn. We all know TV networks will do just about anything to get better ratings this time of year, so why haven’t they considered trying to make their shows interesting? This year we at Rolling Stone decided to do something more than just complain about the state of affairs: We’re offering up our own ideas for change, a new one each day this week, to make TV worth watching again. Ignore them at your peril, execs!

Episode One: The Mash-Up

Everyone loves a good mash-up, so it makes sense to try to adapt that music model to the TV world. And we don’t just mean having a guest star or two give a token five minutes on a less popular cop show — we want to see full-on blending of plots and characters. We want Zach Braff getting once-overed by SVU’s Chris Meloni for the gruesome triple-homicide of his Scrubs co-stars with a scalpel. We want to see Charlie Sheen as The Bachelor. We want American Idol’s Simon Cowell strapped to a bomb that Jack Bauer just can’t quite defuse in time. OK, especially that last one. Just be sure it’s a reality show.

Episode Two: Come back tomorrow to see how “The Executioner” will spice up Monday nights.