When Brooke Brodack, a 20-year-old receptionist who lives in western Massachusetts with her mom and younger sister, started getting fan mail from Carson Daly's people, she figured it was all a joke, that somehow she'd been punked.

But strange things can happen when you post goofy homemade videos of yourself on YouTube.com, the Web site that the TV industry can't decide whether it should embrace or dread.

Daly, former MTV phenom and current host of NBC's late-night show "Last Call," was noodling around on YouTube one weekend this spring when he told an executive at his production company to check out Brodack's short video parodies. An intense young woman with flyaway hair and a gap-toothed smile, "Brookers" had in eight months become one of the most popular hosts on the video-sharing site, which logs roughly 200 million page views per day and is ranked No. 18 in worldwide Internet traffic. One of Brodack's videos, "Crazed Numa Fan!!!!," a wry takeoff on the Internet lip-syncing craze inspired by the popular dance tune "Dragostea din Tei," has been viewed more than 1.4 million times since October.

"I thought there was something extremely charismatic about this girl," Daly said Friday. "Her directing, her use of music — it was very MTV to me."

You can probably write the next paragraph yourself: Carson Daly Productions signed Brodack to an 18-month overall programming development deal, splashed across the pages of Variety last week. Other terms weren't disclosed, but it's believed to be the first time a recognized Hollywood firm has established formal ties with one of the homegrown (and mostly young) talents on YouTube.

Brodack — who deleted as junk the first couple of exploratory e-mails from Ruth Caruso, a development executive at Daly's company — is still trying to grasp what happened. Daly himself "e-mailed me for the first time about a week ago," Brodack said. "He goes, 'I'm a huge fan of yours,' and I'm thinking, 'Aren't I supposed to be saying that to you?' This is kind of 'Twilight Zone'-ish."