The malaise that first set in with the broadcast upfront has now spread to syndication, foreboding weaker sales.

It was only a couple of months ago that forecasters were projecting a relatively healthy 4 percent to 5 percent upswing, pushing expenditures up to some $3 billion. Now, with the syndication upfront well underway, the outlook is becoming decidedly less upbeat.

David Joyce, an analyst with institutional bank Miller Tabak, is lowering his May forecast of 4.5 percent to only 1 percent or 2 percent over 2005.

“Syndication has weakened with the rest of the market, so at best it will probably be up in low single digits,” he says. “There is industry-wide softness and hesitancy, with advertisers waiting for scatter [later in the year] and looking for broader cross-platform deals.”

Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen has yet to lower her forecast for a 4 percent increase, but that figure increasingly seems overly optimistic.

The grim syndication upfront is not surprising in light of the weak network upfront, down an estimated 2 percent from last year, and the cable upfront, which is plodding along and is expected to be up only 2 percent to 3 percent, considerably lower than initial forecasts for a 7 percent bump.

This year’s upfronts have been unusually dragged out.

For the broadcast networks, slow negotiations had to do in part with disagreements over how to incorporate Nielsen Media Research’s new digital video recorder ratings.

And Nielsen said earlier this month that it will begin issuing commercial ratings this fall, making the announcement just as buyers were looking for ammunition to demand price cuts from cable networks.

These new ratings are expected to show a significant decline in viewing during commercial breaks.

“The syndication upfront has gone the way of the rest of the upfront business,” says Joyce. “It’s been weaker than expected as ad buyers have been tempted to start pushing the notion of commercial ratings and not wanting to pay for DVR viewing.”

Syndication is also suffering from declining ratings on many top-rated shows, which means inventory is declining. Coupled with negligible price hikes, the result will be modest spending increases in the upfront and beyond.

In fact, ad-tracking firm TNS Media Intelligence last month projected full-year expenditures to increase only 2.6 percent, compared to an average 4.9 percent for all media.

Syndication almost always suffers when the network and cable markets are weak.

In healthier markets, some expenditures overflow to syndication when commercials on broadcast and cable networks sell out. That isn’t happening this year.

Media buyers say there is more inventory on all television outlets than there is money in the market.

Conditions like these mean media buyers have the luxury of holding out for price cuts in the upfront and taking their time to work out favorable deals. Buyers say negotiations will continue for a few weeks.