A shake-up at Old Rochester Community Television has brought a new executive director to the cable access station.

Last month, the station’s board of directors voted to replace former Executive Director Don Cuddy with a familiar face – longtime videographer Robert Chiarto.

Chiarto, of Sandwich, had tendered his resignation to spend less time commuting and more time with his family. For a few weeks, he had been splitting his time between the station’s Marion location and Mashpee’s cable access station where he worked part-time. When board members asked to meet with him last month, he thought it was going to be a farewell.

“I really just thought I was going to go to the meeting, they were going to say thank you for your service and say goodbye,” Chiarto said.

Instead, the board offered him the director’s position, which has a salary of about $50,000.

The move caught Cuddy, a former reporter for the Standard Times, by surprise. He said he was unaware of any major complaints during his tenure. Cuddy had volunteered at the station before becoming director in November 2012. He had produced “Neighbor to Neighbor,” a series focused on eliciting oral histories from longtime tri-town residents and was still actively seeking participants when he was let go.

“Learning about the news was a real shock,” Cuddy said. “I’m proud of what I accomplished there. I have no clue what happened.”

Board member Michael Parker praised Cuddy for his work, but said it was time for a change.

“We decided we wanted to try something new and go in a different direction,” said Parker, who is the board’s vice president.

Parker also heads the station’s educational programming and is the assistant principal at Old Rochester Regional High School. He did not say specifically why the board decided to hire a new director.

“There’s not one thing I can point to overall. This is something the board wanted to do and luckily [Chiarto] was still available to us,” he said, adding. “He’s a great presence in the community and we’re very happy to have him.”

Chiarto joined the station after a stint as a writer and photographer at The Wanderer. He and his wife moved to the area in 2006, but Chiarto’s interest in video dates back to his high school days where he was a self-described “AV geek.”

In college, he became interested in still photography and did commercial work while opened a fine art studio before moving from Florida to Cape Cod with his wife.

He’s been part of the station since December 2006. Covering the tri-town as a reporter helped him learn more about the communities.

“That helped me to get to know the area. Now when I show up with a camera everybody knows who I am,” he said.

Moving forward, Chiarto said he doesn’t have any major changes planned for the station, but will remained focused on covering Marion, Mattapoisett, and Rochester.

“We’re a community access station and our mission is the same: Try to get people involved and educate the public on how to use the equipment. That’s what we’re going to concentrate on,” he said.