I'm sure that by 1971 CBS TV City in Hollywood had been using Norelco color cameras for some time. I believe that NBC was still using RCA TK-41 Cameras on many of their live/taped shows during this same period.

It's most likely due to digital compression when it is broadcast. I'm in the A/V business and we refer to this as the "soap opera effect", it's most noticeable on LED TVs unless you change settings in the TV to get rid of it. Artificial lighting effects and no depth of field is the result.

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TK-41 and Norelco Plumbicon comparison.
 

Everything was analog in 1971 except the transmission methods broadcast today.

Another shot from the same show. The image looks flat and shiny like plastic with the Plumbicon camera in this particular CBS studio.

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Here is a NBC studio shot with a TK-41. 1973. I think there is more depth and range in the facial tones.

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Update.

2019 Oscar show live on ABC photographed February 24, 2019.

The first screenshot is from a 64 year old RCA 21CT55. A comparison shot from a 2018 LG E8 OLED.

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Two more shots from the RCA.

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My monthly check of the operational status of our newly restored RCA 21CT55, two years, two months ago. Here are screenshots taken today and last night.

Restoration by Mike Doyle.

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One more.

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UPDATE, APRIL 20, 2019

It’s been 2 years, 2 months since the restoration completion and all is well. Today we photographed a series of screenshots of the live over the air broadcast of the Ten Commandments by the ABC broadcasting network. The RCA 21CT55 is 65 years old and has the original 21AXP22 CRT. The shots were taken on the fly, no freeze frame. We used a Sony A6300. FL 16mm, Aperture F5.0, shutter speed 1/50 sec., white balance auto. I hope you enjoy these shots as much as I enjoyed taking them.

You can download full resolution shots from this link: https://visions4netjournal.com/vinta...tv-page-two-2/

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Is This Cheating?
 

UPDATE, APRIL 24, 2019

Is this cheating?

The dilemma for a photographer is how to capture a properly exposed vintage television cabinet without over exposing the television image on the screen! One method is to minimize the room lighting so that the cabinet can be seen, but reduce the light reaching the display surface. This is a compromise at best, as the image will be noisy from low light (unless you have a high quality camera for low light situations) and the display still won’t be properly exposed. I like to see a properly exposed color image and to do that, I usually shoot my screenshots in darkness. Many people prefer to see the cabinet with the display on even though the color image is compromised.

So, we did an experiment. I set up my Sony A6300 on a tripod in a fixed position so that the cabinet of our RCA 21CT55 would be fully resolved in natural daylight without flash. For the first shot, the FL was 16mm, aperture 3.5, SS 1/50 second, auto white balance. It was 4PM, April 23, 2019, cloudy sky, television off.

For the screenshots, we closed the shutters, turned off the lights and the room was dark. The camera, still in its same position on the tripod was ready to take the screenshots. We turned on the television and let it run for 15 minutes as the circuits needed to stabilize with a nice bright, well focused display. (We previously calibrated the set and the set received a full alignment.) We set the aperture to 7.1 which closely matched the brightness on the display. We shot about 35 screenshot images.

The next step was to cut and paste the selected screenshots. This was done the hard way as we do not have Photoshop and all editing was done on my iPad Pro 2, 10.5 which is speced out for 98% DCI-3 color space. What we needed was to “cut out” only the properly exposed screenshots shot in darkness from the black surrounds. Since both the daylight and dark shots were taken from the same vantage point on the tripod, the screenshot images once cut, would paste nicely over the screen on the daylight shot of the cabinet.

The results can be seen below. Not a professional job, but okay. Now we can see the properly exposed cabinet and screenshots together with no compromise. I recall this procedure was a topic in a thread at Videokarma, where it was thought an image on a prototype Pye Chromatron was fake.

So this experiment was to show what can be done without faking the photography. The only adjustments made were to cut, paste and to crop the images to center the 21CT55 within the images. There are two non cropped images below. Full resolution shots can be seen at this link: https://visions4netjournal.com/vinta...tv-page-two-2/

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Very nice. This was the technique used for TV set ads that stated "actual TV picture."

UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 22, 2019

Screenshots of the 2019 Emmy award show telecast live on September 22, 2019. They were taken without the aid of a tripod or freeze frame, direct from my rooftop antenna and digital converter box. The set was on during the red carpet show and the entire three hour telecast. Tap on any image to open the carousel. You can also see the full resolution images by tapping on the full resolution image tab. The set is holding up well, two years, nine months after restoration. Notice the NTSC colors displayed by the 21AXP22. The only other tricolor CRT to have “correct” NTSC color phosphors was the RCA 15GP22 according to the collector community.

Go here to see full resolution. https://visions4netjournal.com/vinta...carousel-10287

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Awesome pictures! Fantastic job!

Still looks amazing!