After one season, four public feuds, a few hundred thousand viewers and countless headlines, Rosie O'Donnell is calling it a day on daytime.

The larger-than-life View cohost announced on Wednesday morning's show that her first season as moderator of the femme-fueled coffee klatsch would also be her last, with her tenure scheduled to end in mid June.

"This has been an amazing experience and one I wouldn't have traded for the world," O'Donnell said. "Working with Barbara, Joy and Elisabeth has been one of the highlights of my careers, but my needs for the future just didn't dovetail with what ABC was able to offer me."

The network was trying to lock up O'Donnell with a three-year deal, something she was apparently unwilling to commit to. She earned a reported $3 million-plus under her current contract, a far cry from the $30 million she pocketed as solo host of The Rosie O'Donnell Show, which ended its run in 2002.

However, O'Donnell won't be gone for good. She announced that she will be back next season as a frequent guest cohost and will also produce a series of one-hour specials for The View, similar to the show's reports earlier this year on depression and autism.

"I will be coming back," she said. "I've loved it here, and I love you guys, and I'm still going to be here—just not every day."

Reps for ABC and O'Donnell confirmed the departure was not due to her high-profile wars of words with the likes of Donald Trump, Kelly Ripa, Bill O'Reilly and the Chinese-American population but rather due to the network and O'Donnell's inability to come to an agreement on a contract extension.

Barbara Walters, O'Donnell's boss, cohost and unwitting Trump feud participant, stressed that the split was an amicable one, despite the Koosh ball-loving TV vet's outspokenness over the past year.

After O'Donnell's on-air announcement, Walters made clear that she did not participate in the negotiation process.

"This is not my doing or my choice," she said, adding that the announcement would likely "bring up things I did or didn't do"—or more likely, say or didn't say about her star host. "I induced Rosie to come back to television on The View even for just one year. She has given the program new vigor, new excitement and wonderful hours of television. I can only be grateful to her for this year.

"We will all miss Rosie on The View and hope she will be back with us often next season. She remains for me a cherished friend and colleague."

Cohosts Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck both expressed sadness at O'Donnell's departure, and Behar extended some empathy for the Rosie's number one fan.

"I'll tell you who's really sad: Donald Trump," Behar said. "He's sitting on a ledge, saying, 'How am I gonna resuscitate The Apprentice now?' "

Reports of O'Donnell's exit strategy surfaced almost immediately after she first took over for Meredith Vieira last September. Aside from being contracted to head up the show for only one year, there were persistent rumors of potential prime-time gigs (i.e., a full-time part on Nip/Tuck). And throughout the year, she seemed to be racking up more enemies than Star Jones did wedding freebies.

But the controversy didn't hurt. The View's viewership has been up throughout Rosie's run, averaging 3.5 million so far this season, a gain of more than 17 percent since O'Donnell joined the team. The O'Donnell-powered show is also vying for Outstanding Talk Show and Outstanding Talk Show Hosts at the Daytime Emmys on June 5.

Despite the success, O'Donnell has always hinted that her View sojourn would be brief. In comments on her punctuation-averse blog, she admitted she was having difficulty making the transition from solo host to one of four opinionated personalities.

As recently as Tuesday, O'Donnell teased that the end was nigh in a video blog posted to rosie.com, saying, seemingly out of nowhere while answering viewer queries: "Listen, the blog's gonna continue. Remember that. It's not going away."

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times said that an announcement on O'Donnell's future was imminent, after a reporter overheard O'Donnell field a question from an audience member about her future on the show.

When asked whether she would continue airing her grievances, and interviewing celebs, on the morning staple, O'Donnell told the audience member, "I don't know. We're going to have a family meeting at the end of May to see what's going on, and every kid gets a vote."

Apparently, the vote took place a little sooner than expected—though perhaps not soon enough for some of O'Donnell's high-profile targets.

Her feuds over the past year were many, but the biggest by far was between her and Trump. The war of words kicked off in December, when O'Donnell criticized Trump for supposedly acting as a "moral compass," after announcing he would give a second chance to the then rehab-bound Miss USA, Tara Conner.

The offhanded comment resulted in full-scale retaliation from Trump, who responded by calling O'Donnell a "vile, fat pig," or some variation thereof, for roughly three months, during which time he also roped Walters in the feud, saying she confided in him that she was looking to give O'Donnell the boot.

For her part, O'Donnell responded in kind, taking her case to the airwaves and her blog. The battle culminated last month in an all-time low blow, with Trump claiming that O'Donnell's revelation about her bout with depression stemmed from her having "looked in the mirror."

Trump couldn't resist sounding off again Wednesday, taking to the Fox News airwaves shortly after O'Donnell's announcement to crow about his perceived role in her stepping down and blaming recent critical comments made by O'Donnell about Rupert Murdoch as a key reason for her departure.

"Barbara's the happiest person in the world that Rosie's been fired," he said, adding that the only way to resuscitate the show now would be to bring in "somebody very good."

"Probably the only one that could really do it would be me, but I would never do it," he told People.

While O'Donnell's departure will no doubt free up some space in the headlines, her run with the View crew still has some juice left.

After announcing her exit plan, O'Donnell announced that her friend Alec Baldwin would be appearing live on the show this Friday.

"He wanted to do a phoner," Behar joked, "but we said no way."

In the meantime, O'Donnell has yet to announce how she'll be spending the majority of her  days next fall, though she and partner Kelli Carpenter will continue work on their gay family cruise line, R Family Vacations, and O'Donnell may even return to her first love, performing on Broadway.

According to E! Online's Marc Malkin, O'Donnell is flirting with the notion of starring in Folding the Monster, a "very dark play," with Danny Aiello in New York. The project has been in development between the friends for two years, and is now a very real possibility to go into production thanks to the sudden clearing of O'Donnell's schedule.