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Facebook's Watch, a new hub for episodic shows that marks the social network’s bid to compete for ad dollars with YouTube as well as traditional TV, begins its nationwide rollout today after a three-week beta test. Eventually, the feature will be available to international viewers, too.

Right now, Watch is stocked with hundreds of shows of varying lengths from both individual creators and renowned publishers, Variety reports -- including scripted, reality, documentary, and sports-related content. Some examples include a docuseries adaptation of the Humans Of New York photo blog, the YouTuber Meg DeAngelis’ popular web series It’s A Girl Thing, and other shows from the likes of Hearst (celebrity profile series Wiki What?), Major League Baseball (Mlb Live), and Whistle Sports (sports fan spoof series Every Fan You Know).

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Facebook launched a major YouTube competitor last week in the form of Watch, a new video ecosystem that the social network says is designed to help creators of episodic shows amass audiences and monetize their work via ad breaks.

And now, homegrown YouTube star Meg DeAngelis announced that she’s one of the first creators to migrate to Watch with It’s A Girl Thing -- a popular series that launched on her YouTube channel last year, and which arrived on Facebook on Aug. 10. In It’s A Girl Thing, which consists of five episodes that have clocked 17 million views to date, DeAngelis plays an exaggerated version of herself as she plans her 21st birthday alongside her fictional best friend, Astrid (Carrie Rad).

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A prime television "Haven" for weird happenings is opening back up for business.

Season 3 of the Syfy series based on Stephen King's story "The Colorado Kid" begins Friday (Sept. 21) -- King's birthday -- with a big mystery to solve right off the bat: the kidnapping of Audrey Parker (Emily Rose), the former FBI agent now working for the police department of a strange Maine town, and last seen being tasered at her own front door by an unknown abductor. Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none

"I think it's very much worth the wait," Rose tells Zap2it almost a year after the preceding "Haven" episode aired (though a stand-alone special was shown last Christmas). "We finished filming the third season by all meeting at the little theater in town and screening the first episode. It's always a little nerve-racking, but we all looked at each other when it was finished,...

On any given day, Lifetime Movie Network might be airing The Truth About Jane. The 2000 made-for-tv film was about a teenage girl coming to terms with her sexuality, and her mother's struggle to understand it herself. Stockard Channing boosted the film's star power and it was a touching portrait of how a family works together in coming out, acceptance and realizing that unconditional love is what's most important.

So, whatever happened to Stockard and the women of The Truth About Jane?

Stockard Channing (Jane's homophobic-turned-understanding mother)

Although her most famous role will always be Rizzo in Grease, Stockard has worked in both TV and film since 1971. After a starring role on The West Wing, she appeared in Multiple Sarcasms, lent her voice to The Cleveland Show and is now working on a new film (A Fonder Heart) with Daryl Hannah and Rebecca De Mornay.

Ellen Muth (Jane, a 16-year-old lesbian...

Producer-director Lee Rose has optioned film rights to the Edgar Allan Poe Award-winning mystery Simple Justice, the first of the gay-themed Benjamin Justice novels by John Morgan Wilson. The gritty L.A.-set novel, published in 1997, follows Justice, a disgraced alcoholic ex-journalist grieving over the death of his lover from AIDS. Justice sets out on a dangerous quest to clear a troubled Latino teenager who has confessed to murder but may be innocent. "It's a really tough and rough book, but I think it's just so beautifully written," Rose said. "A noir story about a gay ex-journalist who's fallen off the edge of the world -- it's something that hasn't been done before." As part of the deal, Rose will own the rights to the character as well as the option to pick up the four other novels in the series. Rose was nominated for a WGA Award in 2001 for The Truth About Jane. She also wrote, directed and produced the Showtime miniseries A Girl Thing, starring Kate Capshaw, Stockard Channing, Rebecca De Mornay and Mia Farrow, and directed and produced the USA Network movie The Color of Courage, starring Linda Hamilton. She is repped by Paul Alan Smith at Broder-Webb-Chervin-Silbermann and attorney Tom Hoberman.

Actress Kate Capshaw is making sure most of her kids don't see her lesbian love scenes with supermodel-turned-actress Elle Macpherson - because they won't understand. The sexy couple make love in new cable miniseries "A Girl Thing" (2001) (mini) - and Kate doesn't want four of her seven children seeing her in action. She says, "I'd be a little worried they wouldn't understand - it's not the two women kissing that would worry me, it would be the mummy naked part." Capshaw says filming the steamy scene, in which she beds Elle, did have benefits - her husband, legendary film director Steven Spielberg, got jealous. She adds, "The day we were filming that scene, we got so many phone calls from our spouses, telling us how much they loved us and asking us all these questions!"...