• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, April 22, 2014

Ellen DeGeneres will executive produce and appear in a six-episode design competition for HGTV that will appear beginning sometime in 2015, HGTV/DIY President Kathleen Finch announced today at the Scripps Networks Interactive cable upfront presentation to the press in New York.

The talk show host and comedian also renovates homes and dabbles in design, Finch said. In this series, contestants will each be assigned the task of creating a piece of furniture in 24 hours.

It’s a joint production with Telepictures, the arm of Warner Bros. that produces her talk show; DeGeneres’ company called A Very Good Production; and A. Smith & Co, which has produced many reality/competition series.  DeGeneres has participated in a few other HGTV surprise makeover events in the past, and they create a ratings bump for HGTV when she mentions them on the air.  

Scripps also announced that its DIY and Cooking Channel cable networks will be added to the Cablevision system that mainly serves Long Island, adding 2.1 million subscribers to each beginning in late May.

At the upfront, Scripps executives unveiled an ambitious slate of eight new series for Travel Channel, 16 new prime-time series for Food Network, and 15 for Cooking Channel.