Frontline Concussion Doc Now Airing in One Night Rather Than Two

The doc League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis — previously branded as an ESPN and Frontline collaboration before the sports network dropped the partnership — will now debut in a single episode in October instead of being split into two parts over the course of a week. 

The project will debut in full from 9 to 11 p.m. on Oct. 8. “The move was made to create a stronger, two-hour footprint for the program, which will be augmented by a robust marketing plan,” said Frontline deputy ep Raney Aronson-Rath in a statement Wednesday. 

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On Aug. 22, Aronson-Rath wrote that ESPN had ended its 15-month partnership with Frontline that looked into the damaging effects of NFL concussions. The sports network’s logo would no longer appear on the documentary or associated website and concussion tracker. 

League of Denial was drawn in large part from the reporting of two ESPN reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, who also are writing a forthcoming book. 

Despite ESPN’s statements to the contrary, a report in the New York Times linked the dissolution of the partnership to pressure from the NFL. The trailer of League of Denial promises “the inside story of a discovery that could change the game forever.”