LITTLETON— Already facing an uphill battle in Tuesday’s Republican primary for an Executive Council seat against a three-decade incumbent, a retired Rumney businessman is upset that a Littleton community access television station won’t run a promotional video for his campaign.

Both candidate Jerry Thibodeau and Peter Martin, whose Newport film company, Exquisite Productions, produced the 49-minute video, were critical last week of a decision at Littleton Area Television’s Channel 2 against telecasting “Why Is Jerry Thibodeau Running Against Ray Burton?” The video, according to Martin, is subtitled “What You Need to Know Before You Vote on Sept. 11, 2012.”

“The public is entitled to see this information,” Martin said Friday. He added that other New Hampshire CATV stations, including those in Plymouth, Hanover and Claremont, had agreed to telecast the video — paid for by Thibodeau’s campaign — in which Martin is shown interviewing the candidate who’s seeking to unseat Burton as the District 1 representative to the powerful five-member council.

But Bob O’Connor, station manager at the 17-year-old LATV, said Friday the station, overseen by the Littleton selectmen and that town’s school board, has a long-standing policy of refusing to air campaign material.

“We’re not treating Jerry Thibodeau any differently than we treat anyone else. We don’t run anybody’s. We refuse all of that sort of material. When you get into politics, you’re offending half the people,” he said.

O’Connor said it can be difficult for CATV stations to gauge the size of their audience, but he estimated that Channel 2 is available to about 10,000 viewers in Littleton, Monroe, Franconia, Lisbon, Carroll and Bethlehem.

LATV, he said, has new studios at the Hugh J. Gallen Career and Technical Center in Littleton, which are also used extensively to teach mass communications skills to students.

Channel 2 typically offers about six hours of programming in a 24-hour cycle, usually broadcasting two hours each in the morning, mid-afternoon and evening. The fare typically consists of selectmen’s and school board meetings, as well as plays and other community events.

“We don’t deal in bad news. We also run a 24-hour-per-day community bulletin board and offer nonprofits free ads,” O’Connor said.

The station’s $30,000 annual budget comes primarily from town and school taxes, he said, with a small portion of revenues gleaned from paid advertising.

Thibodeau, 65, said in a recent interview he thought long and hard before deciding to go ahead with his campaign against Burton, the 73-year-old Bath Republican who has been reporting for work in Concord for 34 years — longer than any other Executive Councilor in New Hampshire history — spanning the administrations of nine governors.

In an news release he issued last week regarding the CATV issue, Thibodeau said, “The public needs to know they are being denied important information to make decisions in this election. Why is Ray afraid of the truth?”

But O’Connor said Friday the decision to refuse Thibodeau’s video was his, and that Burton had nothing to do with it.

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Bob Hookway may be reached at bhookway@newstote.com.