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More information has emerged regarding Star Jones' earth-shattering sayonara announcement on this morning's The View. According to an AP interview granted by Barbara Walters after today's taping, it was ABC suits, not she, who had long ago decided not to re-up Jones contract, citing research which found that (surprise!) audiences mistrusted and disliked her. Meanwhile, those shouts of "Shocking!" and looks of feigned surprise from her co-hosts were in fact genuine, as Jones was supposed to hold off on making her statement until Thursday's show.

"I love Star and I was trying to do everything I possibly could up until this morning when I was betrayed to protect her," Walters told The Associated Press. [...]

Walters said ABC network chiefs had decided last fall not to renew Reynolds' contract because its research showed that Reynolds' dramatic weight loss and 2004 wedding to banker Al Reynolds had turned viewers off. Reynolds had been criticized for a Web site that promoted companies that donated items for the wedding party's gift bags.

"We tried to talk them out of it," Walters said, "and we tried to give Star time to redeem herself in the eyes of the audience, and the research just kept getting worse."

Walters may have felt "betrayed" by Jones' surprise segue from what was supposed to a segment on air conditioning to the chillier topic of her departure, but if the aim was to exercise some last minute disobedience, we'd say her protest barely registered a peep over the series' typical decibel levels. No, if she wanted to deliver a real "fuck you" send-off, nothing short of sucker-harpooning Elisabeth Hasselbeck would do, followed by greedily smearing her face in her former junior co-host's entrails and ranting on about how "you replace me, you replace them all, Mr. ABC!"