But now let’s turn to Nine’s Prue MacSween, who’s been making headlines again for all the wrong reasons:

Commentator causes outrage with shocking Nick Kyrgios attack

- Yahoo Sports, 17 May, 2019

So, what’s she done now? Well, let’s have a look:

UMPIRE: Code violation, unsportsmanlike conduct. Game penalty, Mr Kyrgios ...

RICHARD WILKINSON: … Kyrgios has been fined more than $30,000 for that and stripped of all his prize money. Is that fair? Or …

PRUE MACSWEEN: No, it’s not enough. He should be banned for a couple of years at least. I mean, this guy should join a circus. He’s a clown. He has no ability to handle pressure ...

- Today Extra, Channel Nine, 17 May, 2019

Hmmm. Not too bad so far.

But Prue was only warming up. And her worst was yet to come:

PRUE MACSWEEN: He should have been slapped as a child. He’s a spoilt little Greek brat who’s probably being treated like a Prince …

He is a little creep and I'm sad to say he’s Australian.

- Today Extra, Channel Nine, 17 May, 2019

It was nasty stuff. And even her fellow panellists were shocked:

BEN FORDHAM: Well, I don't think it has got anything to do with him being Greek.

PRUE MACSWEEN: I love Greeks. I will say I love the Greeks … But I'm just saying the Greeks do spoil their kids a bit?

- Today Extra, Channel Nine, 17 May, 2019

A bit like all blondes are stupid, eh Prue?

Who was of course quickly attacked in the media and forced to apologise.

But of course Prue MacSween is no stranger to controversy. In fact, she is a serial offender. And personal attacks, often tinged with racism, are her stock in trade.

Here she is on 2GB in 2017, hacking into Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Australia’s self-described most hated Muslim:

PRUE MACSWEEN: ... she said she’s betrayed by Australia and she didn’t feel safe in her own country. Well, actually, she might have been right there because if I’d seen her I would have been tempted to run her over, mate …

CHRIS SMITH: Hahahaha.

- The Chris Smith Show, 2GB, 12 July, 2017

Just a joke, of course. Or so Prue claimed.

But last September, she went for another person of colour, Green MP, Adam Bandt, saying:

I can’t stand this cretin … He is a danger to the community and I suspect a danger to his wife. If you had to go to bed with that, God help you, love. You are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

- The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 September, 2018

Bottom of the barrel is just about where Prue sits. And yet the breakfast and morning shows just love her, even when or especially when she creates a stink.

In 2017, discussing an Australia Day billboard featuring two young girls in hijabs, she told Sunrise viewers:

PRUE MACSWEEN: … we feel excluded because it ‘aint just about Muslims. You know, more and more these days on television in commercials, you’re seeing, you know, a lot of Asians, a lot of Muslims, you know, spot the Anglo Aussie …

- Sunrise, Channel Seven, 19 January, 2017

Prue also has strong views about women in the armed forces which she’s more than happy to share:

PRUE MACSWEEN: I would hate to be in the trenches with a woman, unless she’s huge big bull dyke.

- Today Extra, Channel Nine, 11 August, 2017

And on teaching kids about gender:

PRUE MACSWEEN: I would like to round up all these leftie ideologues who sit in their chardonnay, chardonnay  sipping offices and dream up these ridiculous ideas which I think are child abuse. I would like to put these bloody people in jail ...

- Weekend Sunrise, Channel Seven, 6 March, 2016

Rarely do Prue’s fellow panellists take her to task.

And only once has a media group that pays her to shoot her mouth off judged she’d really crossed the line.

And that was when Sunrise breached the commercial TV code of practice just over a year ago, largely as a result of her comments supporting a proposal for white adoption of abused Indigenous kids:

… don't worry about the people who'll decry and hand-wring and say that this'll be another Stolen Generation. Just like the first Stolen Generation, where a lot children were taken because it was for their wellbeing, we need to do it again, perhaps.

- Sunrise, Channel Seven, 13 March, 2018

After that segment, Seven put MacSween “on ice” and she’s not appeared on the network since.

But Nine have continued to use her as a regular guest. Proving that in the ratings game, almost anything goes, however toxic, personal and divisive it may be.