Earlier this year the BBC admitted that staff knowingly withheld more than £100,000 meant for charity after internal auditors carried out an investigation into the broadcaster's phone voting systems.
The money was generated by callers voting after phone lines had closed on a number of shows between October 2005 and September 2007, including 'Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up 2007'.
Voters were still charged around 25p per call but the money went into BBC Worldwide's bank account rather than to the charities. The BBC has since paid all the money to the charities.
The SFO also looked into ITV programmes and competitions involving the use of premium rate services.
In May, ITV was fined a record £5.7m by Ofcom for breaches of its phone-in rules that resulted in people paying to enter competitions on programmes including 'Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway', 'Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon' and 'Soapstar Superstar' without their entries counting.
There was also a damning revelation that 'Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway' was unfairly given the People's Choice prize at the 2005 British Comedy Awards when more people had actually voted for BBC programme 'The Catherine Tate Show'.
The reason given for the vote rigging was that singer Robbie Williams had been told he would be giving an award to Ant and Dec in a bid to lure him into appearing at the ceremony.
The SFO will not be investigating the BBC or ITV. It said in a statement: "After full and careful consideration the director considers that none of these [cases] meet the SFO criterion for acceptance for investigation."
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