Until recently the cable networks had good reason to think this year’s roughly $8 billion cable upfront would be decent, despite the weak economy.

Both sellers and buyers were thinking cable would see pricing slightly up from last year because of cable’s increasing ratings coupled with the broadcast networks’ push for yet further prices increases, despite their shrinking share of viewership.

As it turns out, the cable upfront won’t be as good as the networks were thinking.

This upfront, with the economy suffering, buyers have gained the upper hand in negotiations, and the pressure being felt by the broadcast networks, with NBC agreeing to take high single-digit percentage cuts in its rates, is carrying over to cable negotiations.

The cable networks are now largely conceding that rates they fetch for their ad inventory for the coming year will be flat or slightly down.

Cost per thousands, what advertisers pay to reach a thousand viewers, now look to be down perhaps 2 percent to 3 percent from last year, on average, once negotiations get into full swing over the next couple of weeks.

“The biggest issue is that the clients are putting pressure on their agencies to see big decreases in CPMs,” says one network executive.

“I think the clients are a little bit out of touch with the realities of the marketplace. Pricing has been holding fairly well because there’s enough money in the marketplace to justify holding prices.”

This year's cable upfront is moving slowly, following its typical pattern of unfolding after the network TV upfront gets rolling. Some deals have already been written or are close to being written.

There's certainly no sense of urgency. “We’re not going to rush it because the clients know what they want and they’re fully in control of this marketplace,” says a media buyer.

But even with the lowered expectations, cable networks aren’t fretting about the upfront as much as the broadcasters.

Typically, while the broadcasters sell 75 percent or more of the coming year’s ad inventory, cable networks sell about half, moving the rest later in the year in the scatter market, where inventory not sold at the upfront is auctioned off as the year goes on.

So the cable networks don’t have as much to lose in a weak upfront.

If cable networks sell about as much inventory as they did last year, even at reduced prices, they still have lot of inventory left over to sell over the next few months, and there's always the chance that as the economy improves they'll be able to fetch higher prices.

“Typically, we’d sell 50 percent to 60 percent, but we’re comfortable selling under that level,” says Bill Abbott, president and CEO of Hallmark Channels.

Media buyers think the cable networks will ultimately sell about the same amount of inventory as last year. With CPMs down a bit, dollar volume will be slightly down.

As rough as the economy is, that’s not bad, although it’s just shy of as good as the cable networks were recently thinking it would be.

Both buyers and sellers say that cable has a couple of things working in its favor this upfront. It has ratings momentum where the broadcast networks don’t. And cable inventory is still far cheaper than broadcast inventory.

There's also so much more inventory to sell.

“Television is still the best way to get an advertiser’s message out there,” says Abbott. “And cable, within that television environment, is even more highly regarded than broadcast.”