From PRI, Public Radio International and KCRW Santa Monica, this is To the Point.

The Walk to the Zoo that turned into a billion-dollar deal.

How did YouTube become an overnight internet success?

I'm Sarah Terry sitting in for Warren Olney, and this is To the Point from Public Radio International, a daily look at the issues Americans care about most.

It all started with one video of a trip to the zoo. Now, less than two years later, the internet site YouTube features 100 million videos, and its founders have cashed in big, selling to Google for more than a billion dollars.

What's the appeal of YouTube in a media-saturated age? Who's using it and why? What copyright and

other legal issues are involved? Is YouTube's success part of a new internet boom? On reporter's

notebook, a window on life and death nearly a thousand years ago, a spectacular find in Peru.

First, here's the news.

Support for To the Point comes from subscribers of KCRW Santa Monica and from the Public Radio International Program Fund,

whose contributors include the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

I'm Sarah Terry, sitting in for Warren Allney, back with To the Point from PRI.

We'll be talking about the runaway success of YouTube, the internet site that won Time Magazine's Invention of the Year Award.

In less than two years, the video sharing website has created a whole new world on the web,

where anyone can be a star,

from lip-sinking teenage girls to skateboarding dogs. What's behind YouTube's popularity? How is it helping to redefine copyright issues? It played an unexpected role in this year's elections. How will

that change in the future? On reporter's notebook, buried in the past, the pre-Incan

discoveries made by a team of archaeologists in northern Peru. First, this news update. In Baghdad,

the United Nations announced today that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October. That's the

highest monthly toll since the U.S.-led invasion

in March 2003. It's also far higher than the count of nearly 2,900 American soldiers killed

during the entire conflict. The news comes just a week before President Bush is scheduled to meet

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