11:11 AM PDT 3/28/2013 by Marisa Guthrie

Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

The veteran ABC News personality and co-creator and host of 'The View' is expected to make the announcement herself in the coming weeks.

Veteran ABC News personality Barbara Walters is poised to retire in May 2014, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

Walters, 84, is expected to make the announcement herself. She will say on at The View through next season, according to sources, to usher the show through an impending transition that will mark the exits of Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Her final year as a regular presence on ABC News and The View will be filled with tributes to more than half a century in broadcasting.

News of Walters' retirement is not unexpected. She suffered a health setback this year when she contracted chicken pox, which caused her to become faint and fall and cut her head at the home of the British ambassador in January. The episode sent her to the hospital and kept her off The View for several weeks.

And Walters herself has flirted with retirement publicly. A seemingly off-the-cuff remark during a 2011 interview with President Barack Obama that she planned to retire "next year" sent media speculation into overdrive. At the time, an ABC News spokesperson brushed off the news flash saying: "Barbara has joked that she is retiring every year since the Clinton Administration."

The first female news anchor & icon will be missed!!!

Who will ask vapid questions of our celebrities?

So, only Whoopi and Sherry to hold down the fort...

I say they are gonna dump "the world is flat" Sherri also. Im all for a reboot of The View.

Doesn't Behar have her own show?

Behar is getting a new talk show. Its in the works now.....

Its about fu%$ing time!!!!

I want her gone. She's senile, overrules the other cohosts' opinions, and takes her show too seriously.

This is what I'd do.

Whoopi, Ariana Huffington, Holly Robinson-Peete, and Kathy Ireland.

Ha. She denies the rumors. Said she'll be the one to tell folks when she does decide to.

That woman's just going to fall over one day and that will be that.

Hudson said:

I want her gone. She's senile, overrules the other cohosts' opinions, and takes her show too seriously.

This is what I'd do.

Whoopi, Ariana Huffington, Holly Robinson-Peete, and Kathy Ireland.

THAT^ line-up will NEVER work only because they will get along too well from having the same views.

fuck her

in other butt fucking news:

They seem to be eyeing Brooke Shields alot, but I really want to see Ari Wentworth behind the table. Shes smart, witty and fast on her feet.

I'm still mad at him for leaving SVU...

yanowha said:

Who will ask vapid questions of our celebrities?

I know that's all people remember her for over the last 18 years , but I'm old enough to remember the Barbra Walters who was a serious journalist in the vein of and setting the mold for political news powerhouses like Cristiane Amanpour, repleat with safari jackets and skipping across minefields only to be taken by blindfold to interview (sometimes hostile) Heads of State in secret locations, normally with no guarantee for her safety or return home to the US.

I don't mind that she devoted her sunset years to fluff news candy in the comfort of plush surroundings and rosy filtered lighting. With a fifty year career, she is a pioneer for the advancement of women in American broadcast journalism, and fought hard to break a lot of glass ceilings for those that would come after her not only in front of the camera, but as news writers and producers. She's deserved it.

Babs is as old as Metheselem at this point with a stellar career and legacy behind her; if she's chosen to spend her golden years doing vapid celebrity stories, at least (unlike most celebrity news personalities I can see on tv today), she has actually earned that right after a lot of hard knocks in real news environments that actually required her to get out into the world and experience it on a global scale.

Let Babba Wawa have her 20/20 Oscar specials. She has served the American broadcast journalism industry well enough over a half century's time.

purplethunder3121 said:

I'm still mad at him for leaving SVU...

You should've been pissed off at NBC for being too f***ing cheap to keep him on SVU.