"At some point I'll get to it." That's Diane Sawyer on her ABC News contract, which will expire in the coming months, and which she has not yet renewed. Which can mean only one thing: The network hasn't agreed to give her what she wants yet.

Sawyer has been at Good Morning America since 1999. And she hates it. She was only supposed to helm the show temporarily, with her and Charlie Gibson filling in when Lisa McRee and Kevin Newman bombed as hosts. But ratings were good (or good enough), and they resigned she and Gibson, for more and more money. But waking at 3am (and going to bed at 8pm) for a decade can wear on you, so Sawyer's been looking for an out for years. (She also can't be happy about Katie Couric already winning the historical title of "first female solo anchor.")

But then brass handed Gibson the evening news program World News, leaving Sawyer between a Roberts and a hard place. (Eventually that "hard place" became Sam Champion.)

In negotiating her GMA exit, Sawyer's biggest selling point has always been, "Well I can go elsewhere." Which might have been true earlier this decade, but now she's virtually unaffordable, with competing networks reigning in their own expenses. So she may not have another outlet.

But she still has an out: She can walk. That doesn't mean going the Dan Rather route and finding a new job in obscurity, but literally leaving ABC, taking some time off, and either retiring or resurfacing later on. Too bad that's not appealing to Sawyer, who imagines herself as the new Barbara Walters for ABC, whenever that woman kicks it.

All of which begs the question: What does Sawyer want? She's not getting World News; Gibson hosting solo has scored the news show healthy ratings, and ABC News president David Westin won't want to mess with that formula. So she can wait him out, since it's a job she wants bad, but that could be another handful of years.

"You know, I feel the same way I've always felt: You never know until the moment about what you want to do next in this world," Sawyer tells that LAT. "I've never been able to plan ahead and say, 'That's my aim, that's my goal,' because the thing you think may hold the most emotional and journalistic riches for you will turn out to be something that is not what you want to do at all. So I don't think that way. And to me, it's about the chance to have the biggest possible palette on which to do the things I think matter."

Gotcha. So The View it isn't.