It was possible back in the early days of valve sets to pick up the IF of a TV set.
Transistorisation (and tighter emission standards) pretty much nobbled that.
In any case the emitted levels and frequencies were so low that it was possible to show that tvs were in use in a neighbourhood, but impossible to pinpoint any particular dwelling unless it was set well away from anything else - which made ose fo them utterly impractical.
TV detector vans never existed - a good hint is that they were _never_ used as evidence in any prosecution - _ever_. (And this is despite detection systems and triangulation being used regularly in cases of illegal radio transmissions, cordless phones and interference cases.)
The BBC (and most other countries with tv licensing) work on the simple basis that everyone has a TV set, so those addresses without a license are liars. The method of detection consists of unlicensed civilians (employed by a debt collection agency) knocking on doors and trying to illegally force entry, as well as tresspassing to peer in windows. - several so called "inspectors" have been sucessfully prosecuted for such activities.