Video cameras and videotape, as late as the mid 80's, had serious problems with luminance and chrominance saturation. Any extremely bright light or reflective color would overload the optic voltage convertors in cameras and they would "hang" momentarily. Video tape would overload and 'ghost trace' hot images.
Tube cameras can actually be burned out by sustained bright light. That happened to NASA alot in the lunar missions where they were relying on remote-irised cameras. In the time it took the radio signal to reach the moon and iris down a camera that was too hot, it was already burnt out. To see what it does to video tape, watch anything shot "live" in the 70's. The original Dark Shadows is a prime example.
As to the veracity of the story behind "TV Yellow," most things in black and white days were shot to film, which has no problem with white.