Media Coverage

Although they run national ad campaigns, TVL also rely heavily on local media to provide coverage.

These newspapers typically cover a relatively small geographical area, and can be used to give the impression that TVL are taking an increased interest in a specific location.

Although this technique was probably fairly effective in the past, automated searches such as Google Alerts can easily reveal the wider pattern.

For example, in August 2009 over a dozen local papers ran very similar stories within the space of 24 hours. Some examples include:

If you notice an article in local news media which refers to TVL, you may wish to perform a search for key phrases within the article ("caught watching television", "without a licence", etc).

This will often reveal that several other local newspapers are running similar, if not identical, stories at exactly the same time.