BARBARA WALTERS RETIRING NEXT YEAR:

Barbara Walters is ready to announce her retirement. Sources confirm to Page Six that she will step down in May 2014.

Our source says the 83-year-old newscaster will be sent off with a year of specials leading up to her retirement, which will also see her leaving her show “The View.”

The source said, “She’s one of a kind and what she has done is remarkable. There will be an announcement about her retirement soon.”

Deadline was first to report today that the veteran TV journalist is ready to hang up her mic.

That report is consistent with the “youth movement” (comparatively speaking) that’s been sweeping through other networks. The decade worth of train wrecks on The View — not the least of which were Rosie’s 9/11 Trutherisms and Whoopi’s Moon Landing Truther moment — will certainly tarnish Walters’ legacy.

UPDATE: Was Walters ambushed by ABC? “It seems ABC News may have done to Walters what they did to Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and what NBC just did to Jay Leno and Matt Lauer. My source says that Walters had only discussed retiring officially from ABC News, not ‘The View.’ She actually owns a piece of that show.”