Hello,
Maybe it's not the father in jail who puts the story in motion, but?just the menace of taking over. And who wants to take over the network?
Then, I think that you have a clear, ironic, interesting plan?(produce the worst possible show). And you don't need to say "BUT", because in good movies you never have what you're supposed to get. I think about "Brewster's Millions" where a man needs to spend a million in a month to have acces to a multi-millions?heritage, obviously it wouldn't be so?easy. He invests in?the worst possible baseball team... BUT...
"When?the family's network risks to be taken?over by a corporation,?a naive television executive must?produce the worst possible show to?drop the ratings, only to find the?audience?is hard to disappoint".
But maybe I don't get your story right. The question is: the plan stay the same (produce the worst possible show, but?the audience like it) or the plan change (he must continue to produce the show but it's not easy to do it when you're forced to).
I would go for a story where the producer try in each episode to do the worst, sure that it would be a disaster, but the plan always fail at the end.