The Wall Street Journal expects the next generation of YouTube to begin next week with Channels, a handful of hubs focused around a particular theme that feature hours of original, studio-produced programming.

But more than just shoehorning these channels into the current working design of YouTube, the entire site is expected to be reorganized around this new feautes and is thought to have companies such as IAC and NewsCorp producing video content for the site.

This comes almost 7 months after YouTube was said to have thrown down $100 million on original content for the site, and now it seems like it could finally come to fruition. I just hope it isn't a bunch of reality webisodes. [WSJ]