How 'The View' Radically Changed Barbara Walters' Legacy

It's New Year's Eve 2022, and my phone is exploding with sad emojis. "Devastated?" "I'm so sorry." "Oh no, Barbara!"

Oh no, that's right. If Barbara Walters – who died at 93 after a career that changed television and journalism in ways no one else has or ever will – were still with us, she would have immediately requested another time slot for announce his death. Perhaps on a weekday morning, so that all living presidents can issue quick statements, praising his vast accomplishments. Wouldn't that be better for the grades? It would take news banners on every network, along with a reel of clips of his greatest interview hits, from Fidel Castro to Monica Lewinsky to Barack Obama. She would ask (OK, demand) for a “20/20” special hosted by Oprah Winfrey, and tears from “The View” co-hosts, her surrogate TV girls.

Barbara Walters loved many things — but mostly she loved being on TV, being on TV and be on TV. And maybe as much as being on TV, she loved winning. And she did it: again and again, through all the glass ceilings she broke.

It's known to anyone who's seen her in action — because she repeated so often — that Barbara served as the first host of "Today" in 1974, then grew to become the first female co-anchor of the evening news in 1976 (a job that made her $1 million a year but which almost ended her career, because she was so screwed up with her forced partner, Harry Reasoner). She gained fame and praise through her specials, which featured awkward encounters with heads of state and actors. We don't have royalty in the United States, but Barbara was basically the queen of journalism. (She even wore a crown once in a skit she did after her retirement in 2014.)

I had the immense good fortune to know Barbara, my idol, when I wrote my book We've spoken a few times before we sat down in 2015 for what would be the last interview Barbara ever gave. She was in good spirits that morning, meeting me at an Upper East Side hotel and restaurant near her home after having lunch with an old friend from college.

Our conversation started, as she started every conversation, she asked me for good gossip. We talked about Donald Trump, who was - can you believe it? - running for president. But it wasn't as clear as the other times I had seen it. Some of his stories would get lost in a fog. She was mixing up the names and suddenly dropping a bombshell - did I know she almost hired Gayle King in 2007 to be the moderator of "The View" instead of Whoopi Goldberg? Actually, I didn't.

Barbara was self-aware enough to recognize her heritage. She liked to say that she helped pave the way for other women in television, from Katie Couric and Meredith Vieira to Hoda Kotb and her nemesis, Diane Sawyer. "What makes me feel good is when a young woman - it's almost always a woman - says, 'You influenced me and you're the reason I became a journalist,'" I was told. she said. "They looked, and they said, 'If she could do it, I could do it.'"

But like many barriers she broke down in the newscasts, much of her legacy is now linked to a TV show she created on a whim – a show she almost quit before it started. "How about that?" its executive producer Bill Geddie once told me. "How ironic that whenever anyone mentions Barbara Walters in articles, it's never the Barbara Walters as the first lady of journalism, or the Barbara Walters TV specials, or the Barbara Walters of ABC News, or Barbara Walters, the first female anchor. It's always Barbara Walters, creator of "The View". You hear it all the time. It just makes me laugh. It's not that I don't think that it mattered. I just didn't think it would matter that much, considering everything else she's done.

When Barbara launched "The View" in 1997, it was a sleepy program where four anonymous women - you only need to know their first names: Meredith, Star, Joy and Debbie - joined her to discuss the day's headlines. And it didn't...