A method for detecting the presence of a television signal embedded in a received signal including the television signal and noise is disclosed. Either first-order or second order cyclostationary property of the signals may be used for their detection. When the first-order cyclostationary property is used, the following method is used, the method comprising the steps of upsampling the received signal by a factor of N, performing a synchronous averaging of a set of M segments of the upsampled received signal, performing an autocorrelation of the signal; and detecting the presence of peaks in the output of the autocorrelation function. When the second order cyclostationary property of the signal is used, the method comprising the steps of delaying the received signal by a fixed delay (symbol time), multiplying the received signal with the delayed version, looking for a tone (single frequency) in the output.