hole in the doughnut
n.— «Like prospectors in what they hope will be a modern-day California Gold Rush, Hollywood’s studios and TV networks are dabbling in online downloads, mobile phone programming and other new on-demand distribution models. But the people who create the precious commodity these outfits are mining fear they won’t get to dip their pans in whatever new revenue streams these added platforms create. “All the guilds refer to it as the hole in the doughnut,” said John Wells, executive producer of NBC’s “ER” and “The West Wing,” and a former Writers Guild president. “You hear a lot of talk about other things that are important [to the unions], but the one thing that will shut the whole town down is if we don’t resolve the hole in the doughnut—for all the creative guilds.”» —“The Chicago Tribune Phil Rosenthal Media column” by Phil Rosenthal TMCnet Feb. 3, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
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