I’ve worked on a project where I switched from a standard profile to a logarithmic profile, and the difference in how “expensive” the highlights looked was dramatic.
Standard profiles tend to heavily darken shadows in these overly bright, sterile office spaces, which creates that “local news” atmosphere you mentioned.
To understand how this works, rewatch several of the presentation videos in this article which truly have a cinematic feel, and almost all of them strive for that polished, high-dynamic-range aesthetic. This truly convinced me that if the budget and timeline allow for high-quality color grading, log is the only way to avoid a flat, digital look. Even for a simple boardroom shoot, the added flexibility in softening the highlights of a window makes a huge difference.