American movies, television programs, music, books and computer software have surpassed traditional factory and agricultural products as our largest category of exports. That does not include the billions of dollars of revenue lost each year in illegal copying.

• International sales of U.S. software and entertainment products totaled $60.2 billion in 1996, according to Commerce Department data and industry figures.

• Since 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet Union opened new markets around the world to the U.S., total exports of intellectual property from the U.S. have risen nearly 94 percent in dollar terms.

• Experts say one factor in the growing avalanche of entertainment exports is the increasing prosperity of consumers in nearly every nation during the 1990s.

• Privately-owned TV stations have replaced state-owned monopolies in countries as diverse as Russia, Malaysia, Israel, Greece, Norway, Finland and the former Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe.

The penetration of U.S. culture in a post-Cold War world has led scores of countries to abandon state controls for policies of free trade and free markets. Sociologist Todd Gitlin calls American popular culture "the latest in a long succession of bidders for global unification. It succeeds the Latin imposed by the Roman Empire and the Catholic church, and Marxist Leninism" imposed by Communist governments."

U.S. products enjoy the competitive advantage of being created in English -- the first or second language of choice for almost all of the developed world and much of the developing world.

Our popular culture sells abroad, analysts theorize, because it reflects many of the appealing themes and myths of the U.S. -- individuality, wealth, progress, tolerance and optimism.

Source: Paul Farhi and Megan Rosenfeld, "American Pop Penetrates Worldwide," Washington Post, October 25, 1998.