Blurred Visions: Atomic Testing, Live Television, and Technological Failure

introduction the three live network broadcasts of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s were signal events in the early history of American television. [...]the broadcasts failed to evince technological mastery, instead serving as reminders of the possibility of technological failure. In so doing, I suggest that these broadcasts complicate theories of television liveness by foregrounding a distinction between two possible loci of indeterminacy in a television broadcast: the indeterminacy of the event unfolding before television cameras and the indeterminacy of the signal within the transmission channel. [...]when television broadcasted unpredictable live events or experiments in a way that supported the idea of television as indeterminate, such indeterminacy was usually located in front of the camera, in what I call "pro-video" (rather than "pro-filmic") space, rather than immanently in the transmission of the television signal.