“It’s time,” Ms. Walters said, previewing the announcement she will make to the national television audience watching her daily program, “The View.”
“I keep thinking of the line from ‘Cabaret,’ ” Ms. Walters said. “ ‘When I go, I’m going like Chelsea.’ When I go there is not going to be any, ‘Please can I have another appearance?’ I don’t want to do any more interviews. I don’t want to do any other programs. I’m not joining CNN. This is it.”
Like Johnny Carson, another television standout who took charge of his exit from the national stage, Ms. Walters is picking her television end date exactly one year in advance: over the next year she will participate in a series of retrospectives on ABC prime-time news programs and her home on “The View,” seeking, she said, “to say goodbye in the best way.”
Expectations that Ms. Walters, the nation’s first female anchorwoman, would make a formal retirement announcement surfaced in March. She returned from a vacation at that time to say on the air that she had no announcements to make.
But in an interview last week in her apartment overlooking Central Park, decorated with mementos and photographs of her interactions with boldfaced names of the past half-century, Ms. Walters, 83, confirmed that she had been pondering this decision for several years.
“It’s not something that just happened,” she said. “I’ve been thinking, When is the time? When I was turning 70 it was pretty old for television — to me now that’s a kid! But I remember thinking then, Is this the time to go?”
That was still in the previous century, well before the surgery to replace a heart valve in 2011. More recently her health again became news when she suffered a concussion in January after fainting at a pre-Inauguration party at the British Embassy in Washington. After several days it was announced that Ms. Walters had contracted chickenpox, which gave her an infection that led to the fainting spell.
“I am not leaving because I am in ill health,” Ms. Walters said. “I’m now fine. I had the chickenpox, which is ridiculous. I had never had it when I was a child, but I hugged someone who had shingles. I fell and got bloodied. It was not the chickenpox that was scary, it was the concussion. It was the same thing as Hillary Clinton fainting and falling. Chelsea said she needs to get her mother and me helmets.”
The inspiration for stepping aside next year is to take advantage of that continuing good health, Ms. Walters said. “I want to leave when I’m still very active and very viable.” She mentioned several times that she would like an opportunity to smell a few roses.
“I want to go someplace and actually see it,” she said. “I’ve been to China three times. I hope the Great Wall is still there. I went when Nixon went, but wound up running after him with a tape recorder.”
Last month, she said, she went to London on assignment (she has a special airing on May 24 on the next generation of the British royal family) and stayed for only a day and a half. “I’d like to stay maybe three days sometime,” Ms. Walters said.
Of course, the reason she left so quickly is symptomatic of why she has continued to work so long and why the decision to take a final bow is still surprising. “I came back that Monday because on ‘The View’ we had Sonia Sotomayor,” Ms. Walters said. “And I loved her book and I thought, I want to introduce her and I want to be on the show.”
How difficult will it be to turn all that off? “I won’t miss chasing the big interview get,” she said. “I will miss being on the air. I will miss writing. I will miss editing, which is what I think I do best.” She added, “There will be days when I want to weigh in on something and I will have no place to do it except to call a girlfriend. But on the other hand, the rewards are: I can have some fun.”
After another year, that is. The farewell tour (a term Ms. Walters rejected) will include appearing on one last edition of the 10 most fascinating people (they will not pick an all-time Top 10, but Ms. Walters will select a No. 1 overall); a last interview with President and Mrs. Obama; a series of retrospective clips from “The View”; possibly a last Academy Awards special (which Ms. Walters stopped doing three years ago); and a prime-time special next May that will attempt to sum up her career.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/business/media/barbara-walters-to-announce-2014-retirement-on-the-view.html?partner=rss&emc=rss