CREC025000 | Qualifying productions: children's television

Meaning of ‘children’s programme’

A programme is a children's programme if, when production activities begin, it is reasonable to expect that the programme's primary audience will be people under the age of 15.

Competitions and contests

A TV programme which is a quiz show or a game show, or includes a competition or contest, is usually an excluded programme (see section 1179DG Corporation Tax Act (CTA) 2009).

However, a children’s programme may still be a qualifying programme despite falling into one of these categories, provided that the total prizes given out for participating in the programme do not exceed £1,000.

Because a series of programmes commissioned together constitutes a single programme (s1179DD(2) CTA 2009), this limit typically applies to the series as a whole and not on a per episode basis.

The value of any prizes includes both money prizes and non-monetary prizes. The value of a non-monetary prize is the amount spent by a person to provide the prize, not necessarily the ordinary retail value of the prize or its value to the recipient. For example, if a production company buys a mobile phone as a prize which is reduced from its usual price of £700 to £500, the company has only used up £500 of its prize limit for the programme.