Abstract. For a nonnegative integrable weight function w on the unit circle T , we provide an expression for p = 2, in terms of the series coefficients of the outer function of w, for the weighted L p distance inf f T |1 − f | p wdµ, where µ is the normalized Lebesgue measure and f ranges over trigonometric polynomials with frequencies in [{. . . , −3, −2, −1}\{−n}]The problem is open for p = 2.