OK, maybe not backwards, but my prejudice, if I have one here, is that it seems like an inferior method in some ways (multipath, interference, weak signal strength, etc.), compared to cable or satellite. Of course it does have its advantages too, certainly less and simpler infrastructure for one.
I will say that this whole thread has been an eye-opener for me, as I knew practically nothing about how people receive TV in the UK.
Terrestrial UHF broadcast is very popular in the UK for a very simple reason: it is free, and everyone knows about it.
Unlike in the USA, every TV Station serving a region will all share one transmission tower. These are extremely high power (In the analogue days, Winter Hill put out 2 megawatts across four channels), and serve about a 40 mile radius depending on geography. There is no tradition of indoor antennas, instead everyone has a rooftop yagi-uda, if not several - one for each room of the house!
There was no commercial TV stations until the very late 1980s, at which time all-europe satellite stations began to exist on the C band with the giant dishes. So until that time, there was no point to having Cable TV unless there was a mountain between your house and the transmitter tower. For those unfortunate people there was "rediffusion", which was a service which used special stripped down TV sets with no tuner or IF section, and you changed channel by turning a control knob mounted near the window frame. The TV was of course rented from the rediffusion company. This system was just a bunch of distribution amplifiers and wires zigzagging from rooftop to rooftop, it had no provision for commercial TV features like pay-per-view or even to cut off service if you stop paying - because if you stopped paying they just came to your house and took the tv.
In 1990 BSB and Sky, both satellite TV providers started their service. You got only 4 new stations, neither had anything good, mostly just old movies or cartoons, or news. But it had the advantage that you just had a man come and fit a dish to the wall of your house. A little later, "American style" cable TV services carrying commercial stations begin but took a very long time to roll out and only become significant in the 2000s, and are not nationwide.
In the 2000s satellite dishes was everywhere, and there was much more stations. I think 100 or so? All the impressive American sounding ones like disney channel, MTV, Cartoon Network etc. Pay per view features like sky box office.
Despite this, every house which has a satellite dish is also basically guaranteed to also be using terrestrial TV, because installing a satellite receiver box in each room is expensive. Satellite becomes less and less attractive as the attractive American style commercial stations are all closing down and replaced with streaming services. It's common for people in their 20s and early 30s to have a TV connected to the internet for netflix but not pay for satellite or cable.
Terrestrial got a strong second wind as the digital transition allows 100ish stations to exist on it, all funded by advertising. These stations are mostly showing cheap low budget shows and 60s/70s/80s/90s reruns, which is very attractive and comforting to the remaining - frankly elderly - TV watching audience. So terrestrial is probably going to outlive the expensive subscription services.
What I think is interesting, and a little backwards, is how uncommon Terrestrial is in the USA.
A lot of people have no idea that you can still pick up TV with an Antenna, and are paying for "basic cable", which is just the free channels but for money. This seems to be a failure to communicate the Digital transition, with people becoming misinformed into thinking that over-the-air just vanished.
As far as TV Detector vans go, the principle of operation is very simple. They have a list of every residential address in the UK. They also have an address of every house which bought a TV License. subtract one from the other.
There are no court records of any TV Detector equipment being used in prosecution. There are a few of the vans from different eras surviving into preservation, but all are entirely empty inside with no witness marks from equipment having been installed in the past. The stuff on the roof is faked, it's fibreglass and stuff from hardware stores glued together and painted. The only people claiming that they worked were the TV Licensing people themselves, who refused to demonstrate it. Make of that what you will.