STQ

This article is about the Australian television station. For other uses, seeSTQ (disambiguation).

STQ

RegionalQueensland
Channels	Analog:see table below Digital:see table below
Branding	Seven Queensland
Programming
Affiliations	Seven(O&O)
Ownership
Owner	Seven West Media Limited (Channel Seven Queensland Pty Limited)
History
First air date	10 April 1965(10 April 1965)
Former call signs	WBQ-8 (Wide Bay/Burnett) MVQ-6 (Mackay) SEQ-8 (Wide Bay/Burnett)
Former affiliations	Independent (1965–1990)
Call signmeaning	Sunshine Television Queensland
Technical information
Licensing authority	Australian Communications and Media Authority
ERP	see table below
HAAT	see table below
Transmitter coordinates	see table below
Links
Website	7plus.com.au

STQis an Australiantelevision station,licensed to, and serving theregionalareas ofQueensland.The station isowned and operatedby theSeven Networkfrom studios located inMaroochydoreon theSunshine Coast.The callsignSTQstands forSunshineTelevision,Queensland.

History

The station began in the 1960s as two different operators:

• WBQ-8Wide Bay/Maryborough,starting on 10 April 1965
• MVQ-6Mackay,starting on 9 August 1968

The licence to operate the commercial television service for theWide Bay-Burnettregion, was awarded to Wide Bay-Burnett Television in October 1962. The company's shareholders included local radio and print media outlets as well as theatre ownersBirch, Carroll and Coyle.

The station premises in the Maryborough suburb of Granville housed three studios plus an outdoor space for special presentations. At the time of its launch, WBQ-8 scheduled around 36 hours of programming a week and within two years this had increased to 45 hours per week including extended hours on Wednesday afternoons.

Although MVQ-6 was launched on 9 August 1968, its history dates back to March 1960, when Mackay Television Development Pty Ltd was formed. Maitland Low, general manager of local radio station4MK,was appointed company manager.

Mackay Television Development Pty Ltd was granted the licence in September 1963. The Mackay licence was one of twenty commercial licences granted as part of the fourth stage of the nationwide rollout of commercial television.

The station was based at studios in Victoria Street, Mackay, and incorporated into new premises planned for radio 4MK. MVQ-6 made its first test pattern transmissions on the evening of Friday, 2 August 1968, giving the station's engineers and local viewers a week to make sure all was working before the official opening a week later.

WBQchanged its callsign in 1977 toSEQ(as inSouthEastQueensland), and its on-air name to "SEQ Sunshine Television",with its sloganLeading the Way.MVQalso changed its on-air name in 1982 to "Tropical Television".The stations were long time broadcaster ofSeven Networkprograms, as well as of Brisbane'sSeven Newsedition onBTQ.

In 1987, after earlier buying SEQ-8,Christopher Skase‘sQintex Limited,made an offer to buy MVQ-6 which was accepted by the MVQ shareholders. Skase was in the process of sellingTVQ-0in Brisbane as he had also just bought the Seven Network stations in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. This gave MVQ-6 and its new sister station, SEQ-8, access to the Seven Network.

When the regional Queensland television market was aggregated at the end of 1990, SEQ-8 and MVQ-6 operationally merged to become theSunshine Television Network,and thus became the regional Queensland affiliate of the Seven Network. Sunshine changed the call sign toSTQand adopted its new sloganLove You Queenslandwith a matching jingle that was based on BTQ'sLove You Brisbanefrom the 1980s. Sunshine also reformatted its news service to match its partner network and a new logo also debuted with the on-air presentation similar to Seven's.

The collapse ofChristopher Skase's Qintex empire then saw Sunshine Television Network transfer ownership to Gosford Communications in 1992. In 1995, Reg Grundy's RG Capital lodged an initial $89million bid for the company which was rejected by Sunshine's Board. A revised offer of $105 million was lodged and backed by Sunshine's Charman Trevor Kennedy, however RG Capital's plans were halted whenNews Corpthen purchased a 15% stake in Sunshine Television.Another Seven affiliate,Prime Television,then snapped up 19.9% of Sunshine Television before the Seven Network made a full offer which was successful.This led to Sunshine Television Network changing its name toSeven Queenslandand taking on the same logo and on-air look as the Seven Network.

With a few exceptions, its schedule since then has been virtually identical to that of its metropolitan counterpart, BTQ inBrisbane.Seven Queensland won the annual audience ratings for the first time in 1998 against WIN and Southern Cross Ten and has consistently dominated the ratings since.

Prior to August 2017, Seven Queensland was the only regional broadcaster to broadcast7flix.This was due toSeven West Mediaowning the network.

On 26 November 2018, STQ switched the main channel from SD to MPEG-2 HD.

News

Further information:Seven News

Seven News broadcast local bulletins each weeknight at 6pm, in all seven regional areas:Cairns,Townsville,Mackay,Wide Bay,Toowoomba,theSunshine CoastandRockhampton.They are followed by a shortened 30-minute version ofSeven News Brisbane.

The bulletins are presented byRob Brough,with Joanne Desmond co-anchoring the Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton and Toowoomba editions. Sport is presented by Nathan Spurling and weather is presented by Livio Regano. Fill-in presenters include Luke McGarry (sport),Rosanna Natoli(weather).

Reporters and camera crews are based at newsrooms in each of the seven regions with studio presentation for the Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Darling Downs, Rockhampton and Wide Bay bulletins pre-recorded inMaroochydore.The Sunshine Coast edition ofSeven Newsis broadcast live, but may also exchange it to any of the six pre-recorded regions at certain circumstances (e.g., cyclone coverage in the nearest region of immediate concern). News editing is undertaken by the local newsrooms, and sent to the main Maroochydore studios for transmission.

The most successful edition ofSeven Local Newsis broadcast on theSunshine Coast.In early 1998,WIN Televisionlaunched a competing service publicly stating that it would beat Seven in the ratings within six months. At the end of the 1998 ratings season, after a new station head (Laurie Patton) had overseen a comprehensive re-vamping of the program and its external promotions,Seven Local Newshad actually increased its audience share by six ratings points.

In early 2004,Seven Local Newswas re-introduced in the Townsville and Cairns sub-markets as a result of regulations regarding local content on regional television introduced by theAustralian Broadcasting Authority.

On 5 March 2007,Seven Local Newsbulletins commenced production and broadcasts in awidescreenstandard-definitiondigitalformat.Seven Local Newswas the first regional news service in regionalQueenslandto convert to widescreen.

On 22 November 2010,Seven Local Newslaunched a sixth edition for the Rockhampton/Gladstone and Central Queensland region.

On 2 November 2015,Seven Local Newslaunched a seventh edition for the Toowoomba and the Darling Downs region. With the said launch, Seven News became the only news service to cover all regional centres of Queensland since the axing of WIN News in the Mackay region in May 2015. This lasted until July 2017, when rivalNine Newsbegan to roll out local composite bulletins for their statewide affiliateSouthern Cross Television(which carried Nine programming from July 2016 until July 2021). When the composite Nine News bulletins for Mackay and Toowoomba/Darling Downs were axed on 15 February 2019, Seven News once again became the only news service to cover all regional centres of Queensland.

From 11 July 2016, these editions are consolidated with theSeven Newsbranding, though the openers of these editions remained to address asSeven Local News.TheLocal Newsbranding was completely phased out on 5 September 2016 in favour of theSeven Newsbrand.

Formerly, there were two bureaus located in Hervey Bay and Gladstone covering their respective regions, but they were closed due to budget reasons.

Main Transmitters

Region served	City	Channels (Analog/ Digital)	First air date	ERP (Analog/ Digital)	HAAT (Analog/ Digital)1	Transmitter Coordinates	Transmitter Location
Cairns	Cairns	33 (UHF)4 11 (VHF)	31 December 1990(31 December 1990)	400kW 50 kW	1176 m 1190 m	17°15′51″S145°51′14″E	Mount Bellenden Ker
Darling Downs	Toowoomba	35 (UHF)4 34 (UHF)	31 December 1990(31 December 1990)	1300 kW 500 kW	515 m 520 m	26°53′28″S151°36′18″E(analog) 26°53′27″S151°36′21″E(digital)	Mount Mowbullan
Mackay2	Mackay	6 (VHF)4 9A (VHF)	9 August 1968(9 August 1968)	360 kW 90 kW	613 m 613 m	21°1′56″S148°56′36″E	Mount Blackwood
Rockhampton	Rockhampton	31 (UHF)4 38 (UHF)	31 December 1990(31 December 1990)	2000 kW 500 kW	523 m 523 m	23°43′48″S150°32′9″E	Mount Hopeful
Southern Downs	Warwick	33 (UHF)4 51 (UHF)	31 December 1990(31 December 1990)	600 kW 500 kW	301 m 316 m	28°32′9″S151°49′58″E	Passchendaele, Queensland
Townsville	Townsville	34 (UHF)4 38 (UHF)	31 December 1990(31 December 1990)	200 kW 200 kW	617 m 644 m	19°20′36″S146°46′50″E	Mount Stuart
Wide Bay3	Maryborough	8 (VHF)4 7 (VHF)	10 April 1965(10 April 1965)	200 kW 60 kW	646 m 646 m	25°25′37″S152°7′3″E	Mount Goonaneman

Notes:

• 1.height above average terrain
• 2. The Mackay station was an independent station with the callsign MVQ from its 1968 sign-on until aggregation in 1990.
• 3. The Wide Bay station was an independent station with the callsign WBQ from its 1968 sign-on until 1978, and then SEQ until aggregation in 1990.
• 4. Analogue transmissions ceased on 6 December 2011, as part of the national shutdown of analogue television.