Just days after Woods closed on his purchase, CBS indeed pulled its affiliation from WCOV on New Year's Day 1986. For the first half of 1986, WCOV carried on as Montgomery's first general-entertainment independent station, with a schedule heavy on network reruns. However, at the same time, Woods signed an affiliation deal with the upstart Fox network, which would launch on October 9. WCOV was one of the first longstanding Big Three affiliates to join Fox. For all intents and purposes, however, WCOV continued to be programmed as an independent for most of Fox's early years, as was the case with most Fox affiliates; the network wouldn't air a full week's worth of programming until 1993.