Yeah, the commercials are a mix of your Eating, Acting, Low hunger, and a random chance. Early game is heavily reliant on random chance going in your favor for the commercials. Showing up with an empty stomach is an automatic +1000, then you get a random boost of +0-1000, and Eating and Acting skills are directly added to your total score (so if you have 250 acting, you would get +250 to your total score). Once you either have one of those two skills at 1000 or you have some combination of both that equals 1000, I don't think it's possible to fail the commercials anymore.
As for a checklist, the commercials are the only thing you really HAVE to do, but releasing a single pretty much every month is pretty much needed to beat the game (well, to pay off the debt, since you may ulitimately want the ending where you don't pay it back)