Jerry Harris, star of Netflix docuseries Cheer, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for sex crimes involving minors. The show is about the Navarro College cheer team in Corsicana, Texas. Season two came out in January.

The latest season touched on Harris and the accusations against him. One episode featured interviews with Harris’s former teammates addressing the charges, and the twin brothers who are suing Harris, as well as their mother. 

Harris is 22. He had reached a plea deal in February, where he would be sentenced for two of seven federal charges he faced, and the remaining charges would be dropped. He had initially pleaded not guilty to all seven charges late in 2020. The charges he was sentenced for involved Harris persuading a 17-year-old to send him explicit photos for money and travel to Florida, according to the New York Times, “for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct.”

Harris was arrested in September 2020 for production of child pornography. He was also sued by twin teenage brothers who said he had sent them sexually explicit messages, and that Harris had asked for nude photos. 

Harris has been held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. He will also have eight years of court-supervised release following his time in prison. ■

Season two of unscripted hit Cheer is on Netflix. The show details the Navarro College cheer team as it competes. There are nine episodes. 

Navarro is a community college in Corsicana, Texas. “As Navarro defends its championship crown against a slew of challenges, including their fiercest rivals at Trinity Valley Community College, unexpected events threaten the camaraderie of the team and the season itself,” according to Netflix. 

The show debuted early in 2020. In the new season, the Navarro team must contend with COVID upending the 2020 season, and a serious criminal accusation against one of the cheerleaders. Jerry Harris was a popular figure in the first season, and is being held at Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago as he awaits trial for sexual abuse. 

One episode features interviews with Harris’s former teammates addressing the charges, and the brothers who are suing Harris, as well as their mother. 

Season two is directed by Greg Whiteley and produced by One Potato Productions and Boardwalk Pictures. Whitely also worked on Netflix docuseries Last Chance U. ■

 HBO, led by its drama series Watchmen, drew the most TCA Awards wins, the Television Critics Association announced Monday.

The TCA Awards, which are usually announced during a July live ceremony but this year was not held in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic, honored HBO with six awards, topping all other cable, broadcast and streaming networks. Pop TV was the only other network to earn multiple awards, drawing two awards for its comedy series Schitt’s Creek.

HBO’s Watchmen won four awards, including an Individual Achievement In Drama honor for series star Regina King as well as an Outstanding Movie, Miniseries, Or Special; Outstanding New Program, and the Program Of The Year award, said TCA. 

CBS’ iconic series Star Trek earned the organization’s Heritage Award, while longtime Jeopardy! Host Alex Trebek was honored with the Career Achievement award. 

“Entertainment and culture are intertwined and in this challenging year, never has that intersection been more crucial as both a mirror to examine tough reflections and a rabbit hole to escape the noise and scares outside our homes. The 2019-2020 television season was both a challenge and a balm,” said Sarah Rodman, TCA President and executive editor at Entertainment Weekly in a statement. “This year offered up many high-quality options appealing to a wide swath of audiences with eclectic subjects ranging from sports and superheroes, to side-splitting sitcoms, darkly fascinating dramas, insightful documentaries, kid-friendly series, and more. We are excited to see what the future of television has in store, and we look forward to celebrating in-person next year as we come together to honor this medium that means so much to all of us.”

The full list of TCA Awards winners appears below: 

Individual Achievement In Drama: Regina King (WATCHMEN, HBO)

Individual Achievement In Comedy: Catherine O’Hara (SCHITT’S CREEK, Pop TV)

Outstanding Achievement In News and Information: THE LAST DANCE (ESPN)

Outstanding Achievement In Reality Programming: CHEER (Netflix)

Outstanding Achievement In Youth Programming: MOLLY OF DENALI (PBS Kids)

Outstanding Achievement In Sketch/Variety Shows: A BLACK LADY SKETCH SHOW (HBO)

Outstanding New Program: WATCHMEN (HBO)

Outstanding Achievement In Movie, Miniseries, Or Special: WATCHMEN (HBO)

Outstanding Achievement In Drama: SUCCESSION (HBO)

Outstanding Achievement In Comedy: SCHITT’S CREEK (Pop TV)

Program of the Year: WATCHMEN (HBO)

Career Achievement Honoree:Alex Trebek

 Heritage Award: STAR TREK (CBS)

When Netflix released One Potato Productions’s docuseries Cheer on Jan. 8, it became an overnight sensation. Millions discovered the intense, dangerous sport of cheerleading, although fans have been obsessed for years.

Cheer also turned the athletes from Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas — Jerry, La’Darius, Gabi, Morgan, Lexi and hard-as-nails coach Monica Aldama — into huge stars overnight, with exploding fandoms across their social media and appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Like all other aspects of American life, coronavirus halted production on season two, and the cancellation of the national collegiate cheerleading championships in Daytona, Florida, in April meant the whole season had to be shelved. Executive producer Greg Whiteley and his One Potato Productions — his unofficial title is Head Potato — signed an overall deal with Netflix in August 2019, though, so expect to see more cheerleading content in 2021.

Whiteley spoke to Multichannel News contributor Paige Albiniak about what it took to produce Cheer and what’s next for One Potato.

How did this project come together? 

We were shooting [football docuseries] Last Chance U in Mississippi and in an attempt to broaden our horizons and not just retell the same story, one of my producers, Chelsea Yarnell, suggested we spend some time with the cheerleaders. That led us to go to a cheer practice, which was surprisingly intense. Getting to know them, it occurred to us there might be a show there. A Google search quickly leads you to Navarro.

We called Monica and she set up a conference call with the school president, athletic director and herself. We were looking at a couple of different schools, but we were very impressed with not just Monica as a personality on the phone. We were really struck by how organized she was. We knew she would be someone we could count on and someone who would be really great to work with. She had a general enthusiasm, openness and confidence in allowing us the kind of access we needed to tell the kind of story we wanted to tell.

She would be an amazing Hollywood producer. I told her whenever she gets sick of cheerleading she could come work for us.

There’s a lot of talk in the show about getting to be ‘on mat’ at champs. In a way, you chose several of these kids to be ‘on mat’ in the documentary. How did you select who to showcase? 

We have a process. I have just learned by directing and producing — every single year, you pick a handful of people you are going to be focusing on. We always think surely we haven’t done enough due diligence, there may be someone else that is going to crack this handful of people, but that never happens. While I’d like to think I have some special superpower, it’s more likely that everyone is interesting in that culture of cheer.

We didn’t know that people like Morgan and Jerry had such interesting backstories. My hunch is that you cannot become that kind of a cheerleader without being somewhat obsessed and that obsession is usually fueled by something that happened in childhood.

Why do you think Cheer hit in the way that it did? 

When I was physically at Daytona it was one of my most anxious moments of my whole life. I was shaking moments before they went on stage. If I can get an audience to feel that exact same way, I know the show will be a hit.

Does launching on Netflix give a show a better chance to succeed? 

I think Netflix offers an ideal platform for a show like Cheer or any nonscripted show. Back in the old days of documentaries, unless you got on PBS or even later, on late night on HBO, you weren’t going to get seen outside of film festivals. I think Netflix changed all that. They have such a global reach. Whether it was part of their original business model or not, nonscripted can travel very well overseas and it attracts a lot of eyeballs.

What’s next for One Potato Productions? 

If it were not for the pandemic, we would have been at Daytona again in April. That would have been Cheer season two — we had already gotten some amazing footage. I think it’s still up in the air in terms of what they will do with that. All I know is the stories we were tracking were every bit as good as the ones from this season. We’re also working on season five of Last Chance U and a basketball version of that show. We also have some other projects up our sleeves. ▪️