The deal, expected to close today, for a consortium of companies (including Sony Corp.) to purchase the MGM assets for some $4.8 billion reminds us that in today's entertainment universe, it's all about selling DVDs. Truth is, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer -- the once-star-studded Tiffany studio that produced "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With the Wind" in 1939, and United Artists, the great lotless indie founded in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith -- were long ago reduced to financial transactions. Back then you could walk the halls at 729 Seventh Ave. in Manhattan and see posters for Billy Wilder's "The Apartment," Milos Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," Hal Ashby's "Coming Home," Francis Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull" and Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky."

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