BTQ is the Brisbane television station of the Seven Network in Australia. BTQ was the second television station to launch in Brisbane, going to air on 1 November 1959, after QTQ (station of the Nine Network) launched three months earlier. Along with other Australian television channels, BTQ began broadcasting on digital television on 1 January 2001. In the early eighties, Seven National News became the first Brisbane-based bulletin to be relayed throughout a string of independent Queensland telecasters. Within the same decade, BTQ was also a major production house for children's television - hosting popular shows as Wombat, Now You See It, Family Feud, Play Your Cards Right and Seven's Super Saturday featuring Agro (puppet). In the 1980s and 1990s, the channel regularly opened its facilities to the Brisbane public - at Open Days. In the 1970s, BTQ also held annual telethons for the Children's Hospital, featuring network personalities. In 1995, BTQ also produced "Tourist TV", a tourist information channel which could be viewed at various Gold Coast hotels and resorts, including Sea World Nara Resort. Until 2007, BTQ was the key station of the national Austext teletext service. The service was later largely automated out of ATN-7 Sydney until it was decommissioned in September 2009. In July 2018, deconstruction of the BTQ transmission tower began after nearly 60 years of service. On 21 July 2018 the top half of tower which contained its broadcasting elements, no longer in use by the station, was removed in stages by a destruction crew via helicopter. News Brisbane and Queensland 7NEWS Brisbane is directed by Neil Warren and presented by Max Futcher and Sharyn Ghidella from weeknights and Katrina Blowers on weekends from Seven's Brisbane studios, located at Mount Coot-tha. Sport is presented by Shane Webcke from Sunday to Wednesday and Ben Davis from Thursday to Saturday. Weather is presented by Tony Auden from Sunday to Thursday and Paul Burt on Friday and Saturday. The bulletin is also simulcast in Brisbane on local radio station 96.5 Family FM, to regional Queensland viewers in the Sunshine Coast, Wide Bay-Burnett, Toowoomba, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns television markets via the Seven Queensland network and across central & remote areas of eastern Australia, on Southern Cross Central. Previously, Tracey Challenor presented the weekend news for many years until her resignation in February 2007. Cummins was first appointed to the weekday weather in 2005 after more than