UPDATED: The veteran ABC News journalist and co-host and co-creator of "The View" will step down in summer 2014. 
 
 After more than half a century in broadcast journalism and nearly 40 years at ABC News, Barbara Walters officially is ready to retire. Walters will make the announcement on Monday's edition of The View – the ABC daytime program she co-created and has hosted since 1997. 
 
 Walters, who will turn 84 in September, intends to remain on The View through next season and will step down after the season wraps in summer 2014. She’ll continue to be a co-executive producer of the show and will be involved in selecting new co-hosts to replace Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Behar announced in March that she’ll depart after the current season. Hasselbeck has yet to confirm that she’s leaving the show. 
 
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 Rumors of Walters’ retirement first surfaced in late March in the wake of a health scare and hospital stay. (Walters fell and bumped her head at the British Ambassador's residence days before the presidential inauguration; doctors eventually diagnosed her with chicken pox.) But the notoriously tenacious TV personality was brushing off rumors of her retirement as recently as several weeks ago. 
 
 “There were many reports last week saying that I was retiring from ABC, and there was an assumption that I would be making an announcement today,” she said April 1 on The View. “Here I am, and I have no announcement to make. But I do want to say this: that if and when I might have an announcement to make, I will do it in this program, I promise, and the paparazzi guys, you will be the last to know.” 
 
 That announcement will cap an extraordinary career that began in 1961 when Walters was hired as a researcher for NBC’s Today and spanned the feminist movement and the entrée of women into the old boys club of TV news. From researcher, Walters was promoted to "Today Girl," where she was relegated to lighter assignments. But she chafed at being reduced to one of the show’s “tea pourers,” as she characterized it in her 2008 memoir Audition. And after less than a year she became a reporter-at-large, writing and reporting her own stories. 
 
 She was the first woman to host an evening newscast when she was paired with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News in 1976. It was an unhappy assignment for Walters. 
 
 STORY: Barbara Walters Addresses Retirement Reports on 'The View' 
 
 “The blood was so bad between us … that Harry’s cronies on the crew took to using a stopwatch to note my airtime,” Walters wrote in Audition. “If I did a segment that ran three minutes and 25 seconds, Harry would demand that he do a piece three minutes and 25 seconds long. Harry’s hostility soon began to show on the air. I remember reaching toward him at the end of one broadcast, in a friendly manner, just to touch him on the arm. He recoiled, physically recoiled, in front of millions of people.” 
 
 But Walters weathered it and went on to land dozens of important interviews indicative of her extraordinary longevity and range: Anwar Al Sadat and Menachem Begin together; the Shah of Iran; Boris Yeltsin; Vladimir Putin; China’s Jian Zemin; Margaret Thatcher; Fidel Castro; Indiria Ghandi, Hugo Chavez; Michael Jackson; and Monica Lewinsky, to name but a few. 
 
 The run-up to her retirement will include retrospectives of her many Oscar and Ten Most Fascinating People specials as well as a multi-part career retrospective to air on ABC. 
 
 In a statement released by ABC News on Sunday night Walters said: "I am very happy with my decision and look forward to a wonderful and special year ahead both on The View and with ABC News. I created The View and am delighted it will last beyond my leaving it.” 
 
 ABC News president Ben Sherwood added: "There's only one Barbara Walters. And we look forward to making her final year on television as remarkable, path-breaking and news-making as Barbara herself. Barbara will always have a home at ABC News and we look forward to a year befitting her brilliant career, filled with exclusive interviews, great adventures and indelible memories." ||||| Barbara Walters: 'I Plan to Retire' in the Summer of 2014 
 
 After more than five decades, Barbara Walters is hanging up her microphone.The veteran ABC News anchor , 83, said Monday morning on The View – the show she started in 1997 – that she will retire from TV journalism next summer."Let me just say I have been on television continuously for over 50 years. But in the summer of '14 I plan to retire from appearing on television at all. ... I'm perfectly healthy. This is my decision. This is what I want to do," Walters told her audience, which in the studio included Disney CEO (and therefore head of ABC) Bob Iger – who suggested once he also retires that both he and Walters go on Dancing with the Stars.Fellow Bostonian Michael Bloomberg – who now happens to be Mayor of New York City – also showed up, and told Walters she is his hero."I love you," Walters told the mayor, "even if you don't like very tall soft drinks."ABC said in an announcement late Sunday that. despite Monday's announcement, Walters will continue to anchor and report for the network, anchor specials throughout the year and appear on The View "I am very happy with my decision," Walters said, "and look forward to a wonderful and special year ahead."She added: "I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women – and, okay, some men, too – who will be taking my place."Walters has spent 37 years at ABC News, joining the network in 1976 to become the first female co-anchor on an evening news program. Three years later, she became a co-host of ABC's 20/20 newsmagazine.Before coming to ABC, she spent 15 years at NBC News, where she was a co-host of the Today show – after first only being hired for 13 weeks, she pointed out on Monday's The View.After that, she interviewed world leaders, movie stars from Bette Davis to Angelina Jolie and every President and First Lady from the Nixons to the Obamas. ||||| UPDATED EXCLUSIVE: After years of speculation, I hear Barbara Walters may be finally ready to hand up her microphone. I’ve learned a plan has been put in place for Walters to announce her retirement, eyed for May 2014. Fitting for Walters’ status as the grand dame of TV journalism and a signature face of ABC News, I hear she would be given a big sendoff with retrospectives and other special content in the weeks leading to her retirement that would celebrate her 52-year broadcast career. Walters had been determined to leave on her own terms, so it is unclear whether revealing the plans would make her change her mind and whether she would go for a full retirement or keep some TV presence with occasional appearances and specials. 
 
 Walters has been a trailblazer for female TV journalists, becoming the first woman to co-host a news program when she got behind the Today desk in 1974 and the first co-anchor of a network evening news broadcast when she joined ABC Evening News in 1976. She also anchored ABC News’ primetime newsmagazine 20/20 for 20 years. 
 
 Rumors about Walters’ retirement first picked up in December 2011, when TMZ reported of her remark to President Obama made into an open mic during a break in their interview that “I’m retiring next year.” ABC News dismissed the comment as a joke — Walters indeed did not retire last year. Her falling accident and subsequent hospitalization with chicken pox early this year also spurred rumors that she may be ready to reduce her workload. But she returned to work and resumed her duties on The View, which she executive produces and hosts, and at ABC News. A departure by Walters would add to what already is shaping to be a major overhaul of The View. Joy Behar, the only other original panelist besides Walters, recently announced she will leave in the summer. Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s future remains unclear and, despite ABC News’ statements about her long-term contract, speculation is that she will likely leave too. 
 
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– As expected, Barbara Walters today announced the end of a broadcasting career that began during the Truman administration, People reports. "Let me just say I have been on television continuously for over 50 years," Walters said on The View today, adding that she is "perfectly healthy" and this is her decision and she's "very happy" with it. The veteran journalist, who has been at ABC for nearly 40 years and will be 84 this fall, plans to step down from The View next summer, but will stay on as executive producer and will be involved in selecting new co-hosts after Joy Behar leaves the show, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Rumors of Walters' retirement began in March following health scares including a fall at the British ambassador's residence and a bout of chicken pox. "I am very happy with my decision and look forward to a wonderful and special year ahead both on The View and with ABC News," she said in a statement issued by the network. "I created The View and am delighted it will last beyond my leaving it." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made an appearance on The View today, telling Walters she is his hero. As for what she'll do next? She might make occasional appearances on TV, Politico reports, but mostly, she said today, "I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women—and, OK, some men, too—who will be taking my place."