If you really want that old school NTSC look: 0.3R + 0.59G + 0.11B
This is the coefficients I use regularly.
Interesting that the "NTSC" look you describe is essentially rounded versions of the coefficients quoted in the comment mentioning ppm2pgm. I don't know the lineage of the values you used of course, but I found it interesting nonetheless. I imagine we'll never know, but it would be cool to be able to trace the path that lead to their formula, as well as the path to you arriving at yours
Yep, used in the early MacOS color picker as well when displaying greyscale from RGB values. The three weights (which of course add to 1.0) clearly show a preference for the green channel for luminosity (as was discussed in the article).