Every off-exchange-trading print must reach the consolidated-tape. TRFs collect trades from internalisation, dark-pools and negotiated blocks and publish them with venue and condition codes attached.
For tape readers, the TRF print is the tell. A large trade with an off-exchange identifier is not a live quote being taken; it is a report of something already agreed.
Example: a 300,000-share print appears 1.2 seconds after a dark cross at the midpoint. On time-and-sales it looks like a huge trade at a price between the bid and ask — impossible on a lit book, normal on a TRF report.
Related: consolidated-tape, off-exchange-trading, tape-print, trade-condition-codes