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Barbara Walters is not returning to “The View,” despite a new report. Gossip Cop can exclusively correct this rumor, which began on RadarOnline.
According to the webloid, Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell have been battling on-air, and so ABC executives are “scrambling for ideas to give the show new life after a season of dismal ratings, on-air tantrums, and behind-the-scenes ego trips.” And their big idea, says the site, is to “[bring] in the big guns: show creator Barbara Walters!” RadarOnline then quotes a so-called “source” as saying, “They’ve been talking about just letting it run its course this season and bringing it back with Barbara and a new panel in the fall.” The supposed insider adds, “They’ve talked about how to creatively bring her back and maybe use a little comedy, like it was all just a bad dream.”
OK, that “Dallas” and “Newhart” trick is NOT going to happen. Nor is 85-year-old Walters returning full-time to the daily talk show. In May 2013, the veteran newsman called it quits and said, at the time, that her decades-long career was “an absolutely joyful, rewarding, challenging, fascinating, and occasionally bumpy ride,” but retiring was something that she had been thinking “for a long time, and this is what I want to do.” She then left at the end of the season of “The View” in May 2014. Regardless, a spokeswoman for “The View” tells Gossip Cop exclusively that the RadarOnline report is “inaccurate.”
