The View will be without Barbara Walters next year once she retires and could certainly use a marquee name to join the table. But it will not be Katie Couric. Despite a report on Friday that Couric is ready to end her own syndicated talk show to join The View, the two friends both denied the claims.

The rumor that Couric would join The View began with a report from The New York Daily News. The paper’s unnamed source claims that Katie producers are ready to end the show since ratings are down for its second season. Apparently, Couric doesn’t like the idea of doing a gossipy talk show, which is what pulls in the ratings during the day.

“They realize it will never be a success and ratings are down drastically from last season,” the source claimed. “The ABC development team has been working nonstop on new talk show pilots and are looking at high-profile names to replace her, hopefully by January.”

Since executives are “so concerned” about ending Katie in the middle of the second season, they believe that the better course of action would be transferring Couric to The View. “The feeling across the board is that Katie is rejected by audiences when she is alone, but on a panel show she’s incredible, and even not liking her can work in the show’s favor and her favor,” the source told the Daily News.

“I love Katie and we are good friends,” Walters said in a statement to E! News, debunking the Daily News report. She continued, “She is always welcome as a guest on The View, and I was recently a guest on her show, but there is no truth to the rumor that she will be taking my place on The View.”

Couric took to Twitter to also shoot down the rumor. When one fan told her that she hoped it wasn’t true, she wrote, “Thanks! It's totally not true and crazy how complete falsehoods get repeated. The world we live in I guess!” She also sent another tweet calling the report false.

image: ABC