Nashville’s Historic Ryman Now Using Dozens Of Screens For Guest Experience

August 11, 2022 by Dave Haynes

It was not all that long ago when it was encouraging to see an entertainment venue put in a handful of displays – like digital menus and promo screens – around a facility. Now we’re see venues put in 100s of displays – in places like arenas and stadiums – and dozens in smaller concert venues.

Consider the famed Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, which has some 65 screens now in the box office, lobby, concessions and retail shops, as well as associated attractions around Music City. If the Ryman name doesn’t ring a bell, it was for many, many years home to the Grand Ole Opry, and though the country music show built and then moved to its own digs, a renovated Ryman just off the main honkytonk drag in that city remains a big concert venue and attraction. 

LA-based Red Dot Digital Media is the lead signage integrator and has been working with Ryman Hospitality to integrate into the guest experiences at several Ryman-operated entertainment venues, with a main focus on the Ryman. 

Not long after celebrating the Ryman Auditorium’s 125th anniversary in 2017, Ryman Hospitality embarked on a multi-year mission to update the facility with digital signage to modernize the guest experience. Red Dot Digital Media was engaged as a specialty integrator to develop and support content for the Ryman Auditorium, as well as a host of other properties in the greater Nashville area operated by Ryman Hospitality. In total, Red Dot now supports more than 65 screens in the Ryman Auditorium box office, lobby, concessions and retail shops, as well as various attractions throughout the greater Nashville area. 

“Red Dot is privileged to update and maintain key elements of the digital signage infrastructure within the Ryman Auditorium and other Nashville landmarks,” says Darryl Kuder, President of Red Dot Digital Media. “Each year, millions of country music fans make the pilgrimage to Nashville to take in the sights and experience all the city has to offer, and we’re proud to play a role in helping to create those unforgettable experiences.”

The set-up includes:

Interactive Guest Book: Performers at Ryman Auditorium follow a time-honored tradition of signing a guest book before they take the stage. Red Dot was tasked with modernizing how these messages are archived to make them more accessible to visitors to the auditorium, deploying a beautiful Palmer Digital Group 22-inch touch-interactive kiosk powered by a BrightSign media player to offer visitors the opportunity to browse past performers and find signatures of their favorite musicians. Ryman Auditorium’s full library of guest books was scanned and loaded into the cloud-based library of past signatures, making it possible for visitors to search an extensive database of recent performers, as well as musicians who performed many years ago. The kiosk is a time capsule of sorts, preserving notes and signatures in the performers’ own handwriting in perpetuity. 

Digital Menu Boards in restaurants located on both the upper and lower-level concession stands of the auditorium.

Retail Signage in the main gift shop within the auditorium, and the nearby Opry Shop.

I dunno what CMS was used, as Red Dot works with a few software shops like Navori, Wallboard and Signagelive.

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