Budget
I know times have changed since the "old days", but I find that to be a pitiful excuse. You can't drum up one company to pay for a 10 second plug and charge them $1500 or so to cover contestant winnings? I also dislike the fact that Family Feud hasn't paid out a <$300 prize to losing families for years now.
I get that Gene is correct but I am on Mark's side here.
Double Dare isn't supposed to be about the money. In the eighties a few hundred bucks two ways doesn't set the world on fire and the bigger prize is getting to run the obstacle course. During the Family run even a grand may cover expenses and taxes on the prizes, so meh. The money is there as a scorekeeping device. DD'19 painted themselves in a corner by increasing the money in exchange for only winners keep the cash when no one would have batted an eye if the kick-off toss-up awarded $25.
This ties into something that was hugely frustrating to me as a youngster. I watched Get the Picture a bunch as a youth--it felt like the show where I would have stood the best chance as a kid to succeed. It was cool to me that the prize money was more than what would be won per person than on Double Dare--then during the second season the game was scored for points and the end game made bloody impossible. Sure, they probably saved fifty grand over the second season but they could have kept the cash prizes intact if the money amounts were lowered in the first place.
And that's to say nothing about Nick Arcade, which was played for points and then awarded $50 per item in the Video Zone. It felt like a total copout to me when the biggest cable network for kids couldn't muster up more than a few hundred dollars for only he team that won.