• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 13, 2005

HGTV.com Monday said it plans to soft launch a broadband video channel devoted entirely to kitchen redesign on Thursday. HGTV Kitchen Design will feature over 200 streaming videos covering design trends and makeover tips, as well as various personalization and idea-sharing tools.

The vertical is the first of several niche video broadband sites that Scripps Networks plans to spin off of HGTV.com over the next 18 months. Other niche sites will focus on bathroom design, healthy eating, and gardening.

HGTV Kitchen Design will launch with six charter advertisers including Kohler, Moen, Viking, Dupont, Whirlpool, and Sherwin Williams. Each is signed up for a variety of ad formats such as traditional 15- and 30-second spots within videos, banner ads, and integration into the channel's centerpiece--an interactive kitchen planner that consumers can use to test kitchen design elements.

With the planner, they can check out new cabinets, change the color palette, or move an island around. Consumers can also store the plans in a folder on the site and e-mail them to, say, a contractor. Scripps is also talking to advertisers about creating long-form videos early next year in their content categories.

Scripps is on a marketing campaign for HGTV Kitchen Design to launch in January, consisting of paid keyword searches on Google and Yahoo! for "kitchen design," as well as cross-promotion on HGTV television. Other Scripps broadband initiatives have drawn healthy traffic to date. The FoodNetwork.com's Web series "Eat This With Dave Lieberman," which launched in late November, drew over 16.5 million page views in one day from nearly 800,000 unique visitors.