Gaylord is not a company to be broken down in few words. In fact, its lack of a unifying corporate identity prompted the conglomerate to pay $80 million to reopen the Nashville Arena in its own name in late 1999. The opening ceremony was followed by a Predator hockey game, a team that Gaylord partially owns. Operations at Gaylord are clearly versatile, with attractions and hospitality units that account for more than half of sales and a host of other divisions that target travel, broadcast, music and cable TV. Most prominent among the company's 32 subsidiaries are Acuff-Rose Music Publishing; CMT, a 24-hour cable country music network; the sprawling, Nashville-based Opryland Hotel; Word Entertainment, with its six Christian record labels; Pandora Investments, film producer and distributor; and an Internet division, GETdigitalmedia, which sells country and Christian music. From God to country to a shopping complex with mini-golf, Gaylord has a business representing. The company is still 40 percent owned by the founding families, the Gaylord's and the Dickinson's. (One need not mention how much the family names sound like part of a Saturday Night Live skit.)
Round 'em up, Gaylord
Gaylord Entertainment traces its roots back to the Oklahoma Publishing Company, a newspaper business that was founded by Edward Gaylord, Ray Dickinson and Roy McClintock in 1903. In 1928, Gaylord entered the radio waves with the purchase of Oklahoma City station WKY. The next round up was in TV land, when Gaylord created the WKY-TV in 1949. Under the company's second generational leadership, Oklahoma Publishing purchased Opryland USA, including the Grand Ole Opry, Opryland Themepark (which was renovated into a shopping and restaurant complex in 1998) and the 2,900-room Opryland Hotel. This same year, in 1983, Opryland USA launched the TV Nashville Network, which broadcast cable music. In 1991, Oklahoma Publishing went public with its entertainment holdings and formed Gaylord Entertainment. Gaylord was quick to the chase in acquiring the cable music network, Country Music Television (CMT), which has since expanded to Latin America and the Pacific Rim. In 1997, Gaylord sold the Nashville Network and US operations of CMT to CBS. Within the next two years, the company sold off all its TV stations and bought Word Entertainment Christian music labels and Blanton Harrell Entertainment, an artist management group.
Integrating new media
Country music, square as it may be, has proven to be comfortable in cyberspace. In 1999, Gaylord launched GETdigital media, which sells country and Christian music and provides content to broadcast.com's spiritual channel. Within a few months, CMT launched its web site, www.onecountry.com. In one month on the web, the site recieved over 160,000 page views.
Resume & Cover Letters
Interview Preparation