just because the relative range is the same, it doesn’t mean the consistency is. the analog signal and the color subcarrier chews the hell out of whatever you’re broadcasting. many family’s still had their 70s era color tvs which would be fuzzy and off tint well into the cable era. it was more about minimizing damage rather than achieving a pristine picture.

now that the hardware baseline is so good, you can count on that extra quality overhead to show up, even with the same rgb range.

there’s a reason component cables didn’t push past 1080i. you lost at literally EVERY transmission step before things went digital.

That is only partially correct. They have similar range but the quality of the image, not to mention the broadcast itself, factored into how the images were colorized. Thus, older shows DO have more/darker color.