On September 1, 2003, NBC moved its affiliation from KTWO to KCWY (channel 13). Equity had known at the time it acquired the station that the NBC affiliation would expire; in preparation for the move, on June 27, 2003, KTWO-TV announced that it had agreed to affiliate with ABC, and that the new affiliation would not take effect until the expiration of ABC's contract with KFNB on June 5, 2004. In the interim, KTWO operated as an independent station, but carried programming from Pax TV (now Ion Television), including "Candid Camera" and "Miracle Pets"; before the affiliation change, Pax programming had been seen on KCWY. Cheyenne satellite station KKTU was able to immediately switch from NBC to ABC, and began branding itself as "ABC 8", after its position on the Cheyenne cable system. After reaching an agreement with KTWO, KFNB agreed to end its ABC affiliation early; on March 8, 2004, KTWO officially became an ABC affiliate, KFNB obtained the Fox affiliation from K26ES (now MyNetworkTV affiliate KWYF-LD channel 29) and K26ES became an affiliate of UPN and Pax.