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Plymouth on BBC and ITV has been mostly desk based for as long as there's been regional news. Our first all sofa presentation would have been the 2002 revamp of Westcountry Live. It then remained sofa based until the Plymouth studios closed in 2009.

BBC South West has remained very much desk based, albeit with the addition of the soft area in more recent times. The only time they went sofa based was during the temporary set era whilst the upgrades were taking place in about 2015. As to when the soft area first appeared, I think it was as late as 2004, when there was a studio set revamp to bring it more into line with the national set at the time, and the grey sofa first appeared.

So yeah, the South West was quite late to the sofa party.