Even many guest or public WiFi captive portals in the US only seek to enforce agreement to a terms of service and/or privacy policy, not necessarily gathering identifying info and not locking behind a password. (Yes, there are also those which do require a password or identifying info, but that’s not due to a legal requirement.)
It’s relatively rare nowadays that I see a guest or public WiFi network with neither a captive portal nor a password, but again, those do still sometimes occur and are fully legal in the US. Organizations (and their insurers) do tend to like the protections of legalese and/or identifying users, but US law doesn’t generally force them into it in this context.
LG wants my data. Well Craftsman wants my data too. Current evidence suggests that the TV without network access is going to have as much luck reporting my data to corporate headquarters as the tools I used to mount it on the wall.
Yes, this is technically possible but to claim that there are TVs that actually do this is something else.
If it is technically possible, encouraged, and worth money, you can bet someone is doing it in the 2020s. No need to wait for journalistic confirmation, a dying industry. Internet surveillance capitalism is quite mature these days.
At best we can say no one has gotten around to it, but that is just one update away from being false.