All of these factors have led electronics stores like Circuit City and Best Buy, and even less specialized chains like Sears, Wal-Mart and Office Depot, to put TVs front and center in their advertising recently, promoting them on the cover of Sunday circulars and on the home pages of Web sites. They are offering discounts  like 42-inch TVs for less than $700 and 32-inch sets for $450  that come on top of recent steep price declines for the sets.

Image Shoppers comparing TVs on Friday at a Wal-Mart in Secaucus, N.J. Retailers use big discounts on televisions to lure consumers into stores. Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

For the industry, the feeling is that if retailers cannot get TVs to move, the holiday season could be a bleak one indeed. In that sense, the TV market offers a glimpse of the broader tensions this year between wary consumers on the one hand and retailers and manufacturers desperate to spur sales on the other.

“The television becomes a litmus test of the robustness of the American economy,” said Richard Doherty, an electronics industry analyst with the research firm Envisioneering. In Mr. Doherty’s consumer surveys, the early word is mixed; many consumers want a new TV, but they think that if they wait to buy, retailers will drop prices further.

There were signs on Friday that more cuts might be necessary. At two malls outside Portland, Ore., the electronics stores were the only ones that were full of shoppers. But people seemed to be gravitating toward lower-priced items like video games instead of televisions.

Mr. Doherty’s firm tracked stores in New York and California and found that for some retailers it was the slowest Black Friday of the decade. “There are lots of big-screen TVs still standing on the show floor,” he said. “This is not what was expected by retailers or manufacturers.”

Store owners may cut TV prices even further with revamped sales starting on Sunday, Mr. Doherty said.

Steven Caldero, chief operating officer of Ken Cranes, a 10-store consumer electronics chain in the Los Angeles area, painted a rosier picture.