Legendary newscaster Barbara Walters confirmed earlier reports that she will step down from her posts at ABC News and at morning talker “The View” next summer, when she leaves a decades-long career in TV journalism that started during the early days of NBC’s “Today” program.
Until that time, ABC News said in a statement Sunday evening, she will continue to anchor and report for ABC News, appear on “The View,” and anchor specials throughout the year including a “20 Years of 10 Most Fascinating People” special in December, an Oscars special, and a May career retrospective. Walters will remain executive producer of “The View,” the show she created in 1997.
“I am very happy with my decision,” she said in a prepared statement, adding, ” I created ‘The View’ and am delighted it will last beyond my leaving it.”
Walters began her career in 1961 at NBC’s “Today Show,” where she eventually became a co-host. In 1976, she found a new home at ABC Evening News, where she became the first female anchor on an evening news program. Three years later, she became a co-host of “20/20.”
Walters ” will always have a home at ABC News,” said ABC News prexy Ben Sherwood in a prepared statement.
Walters said she would not seek out new TV-news frontiers in her post-retirement years. “I do not want to appear on another program or climb another mountain,” she said.