In reality it was mostly just a stunt to scare people into paying the fees. In 90s a number of countries in Europe had tried the similar actions, I remember in

In reality it was mostly just a stunt to scare people into paying the fees. In 90s a number of countries in Europe had tried the similar actions, I remember in Serbia the national tv station RTS was advertising continuously how their technicians are walking the city with "Swedish detectors", which were some mysterious boxes, probably some kind of EM detectors, that supposedly could detect TV devices inside the homes - but of course the whole thing was a load of crap as it's a way too much work to make it profitable, so it was mainly used just to scare the senior population into paying them. Later they simply changed the laws to make it mandatory for every household to pay the TV tax, as their detectors obviously didn't work.