For years, the Spanish-language upfront followed the broadcast upfront but was always first when it came to increases in ad spending for the coming year's TV season.

Not so this year.

While both broadcast and cable have had strong upfronts, Spanish-language television, whose upfront is now underway, is expected to see only a modest 6 percent increase over last year’s expenditures by the time negotiations wrap up later this summer.  Last year's spending was up just over 10 percent.

“Spanish-language media was accustomed to double-digit increases in ad dollars in the 1990s, but I think those days are gone forever,” says Raquel Tomasino, director of operations and media at Ferrer USA in Los Angeles.

Going forward, gains will be far more in line with those of English-language TV.

“We should continue to see increases in ad dollars and cost-per-thousands due to the natural progression of things, such as the change in population, growth in media consumption and consumer behavior," says Tomasino.

Some of the slowing in this year's upfront is the natural result of the market maturing, but the economy is playing a large role.

With the economy uncertain and budgets tight, advertisers first rushed in to lock up inventory on the English-language networks, leaving less to spend on Spanish-language media. They've been more cautious about spreading their dollars to media they didn't understand as well.

Buyers are also being more aggressive in their negotiations, with some working in more options to cancel upfront commitments just in case the ad economy gets weaker and prices fall.

And some buyers are reaching past the big networks, Univision and Telemundo, to capture their audiences through lower-cost media, such as the internet, mobile devices and Spanish-language cable networks like Fox Sports en Espanol and Discovery en Espanol, which have relatively small audiences but favorable pricing.

At Fox Sports en Espanol, says senior vice president of ad sales Tom Maney, “We see existing advertisers spending at or above last year and we see continued growth of new business in the marketplace, whether that’s broadcast-only Spanish-language advertisers trying cable or advertisers new to the marketplace."

What also may be hurting the Spanish-language upfront is a decision by Univision to resist adopting the new C3 system for negotiating rates that were adopted by the English-language networks at last year's upfront.

Though it only delayed deal-making a short while, it gave the English-language networks time to snag money that would have otherwise gone to Spanish-language.

“The general-market networks saw a weakened economy and said, ‘Look, we better go in and get all the money we can,’” says Miami-based media consultant Julio Rumbaut. “Univision pushed hard against C3, maybe too hard.”

Last year, the English-language networks switched from program ratings to C3 ratings: commercial ratings based on live viewing and three days of DVR playback. The commercial ratings are lower than program ratings but the English-language networks see a bump from DVR playback that offsets this decline.

Spanish-language networks don’t see this bump because DVR penetration in Hispanic homes is low.

Negotiations in the Spanish-language upfront will continue at least into next month, and estimates for total ad sales range in the mid- to upper-single digits.

Rumbaut expects dollar volume to be up 6 percent over last year. David Joyce, an analyst at Miller Tabak, is projecting a 7 percent increase for Univision, which also includes its TeleFutura and Galavision, to $1.15 billion. He’s projecting a 5.9 percent increase for Telemundo, to $450 million.

But even these projections may be on the high side, says Hector Orci, cofounder of La Agencia de Orci in Los Angeles.

“There will be some growth in overall spending but it could be closer to even to last year,” he says. “There is a lot of economic uncertainty, so some advertisers may be reserving some of their budget for later in the year.”