# If you needed to compile a list of lawyers advertising on local cable TV how would you do it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 3, 2019, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333 "2019-12-03T22:27:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![greenpurple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/278dde/32.png) [@greenpurple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/greenpurple)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/1 "2019-12-03T22:27:15Z")
Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/2 "2019-12-03T22:39:26Z")
Complete? Call every lawyer, law firm, etc and ask. Then call all the cable provider’s ad departments, and ask for a list. Compere the two lists. You’ll still miss some. otherwise, hire 3000 people to watch every cable channel 24/7 and write down the firms. And hire more people to watch and make sure the 3000 don’t miss any. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2019, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/3 "2019-12-03T23:45:57Z")
Or you could pay someone else to do it. From a google hit: “~~is the nation’s leading local monitoring company, serving the media and advertising industries with near real-time intelligence on broadcast TV, cable, radio, print and digital.” ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/4 "2019-12-04T07:53:37Z")
Way back when, one merely bribed the all-night engineer to xerox the logs. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/5 "2019-12-04T15:34:37Z")
Look up all the lawyers listed in yellow pages (or equivalent); phone them to discuss their rates. Discard the expensive ones. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/6 "2019-12-04T22:54:37Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Complete? > > Call every lawyer, law firm, etc and ask. … I’d think the easier way to get this part would be to check with the State Bar to get a list of all the people licensed to practice law in the state. But that would include many who don’t advertise on Cable, and even some who no longer practice to the public at all, etc. I’m not sure why you’d need the list of lawyers at all – just get a list of advertisers on cable, since that’s what you’re interested in. But I don’t think the cable companies will give out info on their advertisers. Maybe a local advertising agency might have info on this? ---
**Author:** ![lingyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d2c977/32.png) [@lingyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lingyi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/7 "2019-12-05T03:05:02Z")
Record 24/7 for a week and extrapolate from what you see or record for a longer period, months/years to get a more accurate list. I’m not being facetious. At one point in the early 2000’s. before streaming of channels and YouTube on the 'net became a thing, I used to record a premium Chinese channel 24/7 and keep an eye out for my favorite actresses. My cable box could FF @ 32x, so it would take me less than an hour to scan through an entire day. I caught a few frames of a news story about my favorite actress. The frames were on-screen for less than a second (the news story showed a , but I immediately recognized her. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/8 "2019-12-05T03:30:54Z")
> [@lingyi](#): > > Record 24/7 for a week and extrapolate from what you see or record for a longer period, months/years to get a more accurate list. Frankly, you wouldn’t even need to do it 24/7. Based on what I see, the lawyers who are advertising on TV are nearly always personal injury attorneys; their ads are nearly always run on daytime TV, or late at night. Watch a handful of those channels in those time frames for a week, and that will likely get you the vast majority of them. Also, the ads seem to fall into two camps: 1. The local law firms, along the lines of “hurt in a wreck? Need a check?” Those ads are the ones that tend to run in the daytime. 2. The firms looking for national participants in class-action lawsuits against big companies (typically for mesothelioma victims, people who have used Roundup, etc.). Those ads tend to run on cable channels late in the evening. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/9 "2019-12-05T03:34:10Z")
> [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](#): > > I’m not sure why you’d need the list of lawyers at all – just get a list of advertisers on cable, since that’s what you’re interested in. But I don’t think the cable companies will give out info on their advertisers. Maybe a local advertising agency might have info on this? Indeed, the cable companies would not give out such a list, just because someone asked for it. Even local ad agencies might have a difficult time of putting together a list of every advertiser who bought spot TV ads in a market – and even if they did have it, again, that’s not something that they would just give away. ---
**Author:** ![greenpurple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/278dde/32.png) [@greenpurple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/greenpurple)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-needed-to-compile-a-list-of-lawyers-advertising-on-local-cable-tv-how-would-you-do-it/844333/10 "2019-12-05T23:18:41Z")
> [@lingyi](#): > > Record 24/7 for a week and extrapolate from what you see or record for a longer period, months/years to get a more accurate list. > > I’m not being facetious. At one point in the early 2000’s. before streaming of channels and YouTube on the 'net became a thing, I used to record a premium Chinese channel 24/7 and keep an eye out for my favorite actresses. My cable box could FF @ 32x, so it would take me less than an hour to scan through an entire day. I caught a few frames of a news story about my favorite actress. The frames were on-screen for less than a second (the news story showed a , but I immediately recognized her. most baller suggestion so far.