Northern is smeary but you can see 28S and 18S bands - (May/30/2006 )

My Northern blot is smeary, but the 28S and 18S bands are there (they aren't tight band but they're there). I loaded 20 ug of RNA and all of the samples are transfected L cells (mouse). The ratios for the RNA's were all around 1.9 and I followed my protocol? any ideas? are they completely degraded? am I going to get any results after I probe? HELP!!

can you post a picture?
depends how relative are the intensity of [28S/18S] and the smear