LEWISTON – Two weeks before his big-time TV premiere, Jake Sasseville finally has a deal for his youth-oriented talk show to air in his hometown: Lewiston.

It almost didn’t happen.

Though Sasseville managed to get TV stations in 32 states to air his New York-produced show at 1 a.m. – right after comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s midnight show – Auburn’s WMTW-TV refused him.

“The Edge with Jake Sasseville” is an unusual show. Like a producer of an infomercial, the Lewiston native is buying up TV time to air the show. Ads from his sponsors, including Overstock.com, Bed Head and Ford, are incorporated into the show itself.

“We declined his offer due to his program format,” said Sarah Nash, who sells advertising for the station. She would not elaborate on the decision.

However, WPME-TV in Lewiston has agreed to air the show.

“Gee, if Jake can’t get on in his own home state, something isn’t right,” said Doug Finck, station manager of WPME. The station broadcasts over the air on Channel 35 and on Time Warner Cable at Channel 3 in the Lewiston-Auburn area.

Finck heard that Jake was having trouble getting on the air here and called him in New York.

“I said, ‘I’d love to put you on,'” Finck said.

When the weekly show debuts on Feb. 14, it will air on Finck’s station at 11 p.m., making it the first place in the country where it will be seen.

Sasseville, 22, said he is grateful. “I had to get the show on in Maine. It was personal for me. I started there.”

In fact, he was still attending Edward Little High School when he hosted a talk show on Lewiston-Auburn’s public access TV.

Sasseville is a student at Marymount Manhattan College, but unlike most college students, he has a staff of between 15 and 30 people.

“I’m building an empire, so I need people to help,” Sasseville said Tuesday in a phone interview from Las Vegas, where he was shooting material.

The show aims for a 20-something market, and Sasseville has described himself as the “voice of the generation.”

“The Edge” is expected to include interviews with celebrities, comic bits that take Sasseville out of the studio, and lots of behind-the-scenes footage.

He is producing 13 episodes for what he has labeled “Season One.”

If the first run goes well, Sasseville hopes to produce a second season. He is also in talks with two networks over picking up the show, but the details are hush-hush, he said.

Sasseville figures he has a better-than-average shot at getting on network TV, even if the odds are against him.

“That’s the way I visualize and manifest things,” he said. “They’ll work out.”