YouTube’s new premium content push featuring the likes of Madonna and Ashton Kutcher spurred speculation that the Google-owned site is issuing a direct challenge to the television industry.

U.S. net Oxygen has greenlit the Eva Marcille Project (w/t), starring the former America’s Next Top Model winner, and LA Style (w/t), focusing on four celebrity stylists.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Under a featureless, cloud-ridden sky in early May, Michael Hirschorn was sitting in an empty room on a fold-out chair, the kind more typically reserved for unexpected dinner guests. He had commandeered a corner den in the new New York offices of his TV production company, Ish Entertainment, and was tugging on the ear cord of his BlackBerry, his head bobbing in tune to the conversation.

Rainbow Media’s WE tv has greenlit three new series and announced the U.S. premieres of two popular Canadian docusoaps for its 2011-2012 slate.

As TV Guide Network continues its transition to a full-fledged programming channel, the cabler announced a half-dozen series and minis in development.

Mildly disgraced New Zealand television “presenter” Paul Henry, who resigned from his seven-year gig hosting the morning news show Breakfast last year after a racially insensitive—albeit amusing—riff about the surname of an Indian government minister, is getting a second chance in America.