ALAN ESSLEMONT has a big job to do. If the future of Scotland's Gaelic digital television station is to be assured, its head of content must make your ordinary Scot tune in to the new station on a regular basis. And if that wasn't hard enough, he has only 15 months to make this happen.

Welcome to The Gaelic Job, which Esslemont says he is more than happy to be tackling. He promises the new station - which was given the go-ahead last week - will "move the image of Gaelic in Scottish society onwards, creating a new atmosphere and identity", while also "giving people across Scotland what they want: a decent programme to watch on TV at eight o'clock or nine o'clock."

It had better. If it fails, the channel - which has still to be named - risks being shut out from Freeview, the way most Scots are expected to access digital when the process of turning off the analogue signal begins in Scotland in 2009.

Not that Esslemont, who arrived last month, is admitting to being fazed. The Brechin-raised father of five worked in a Skye knitting factory for two years just so he could learn Gaelic properly. Having previously been the director of television at Ireland's Gaelic language station TG4, a position he held for five years, he says he's the right man for a tough job.

"In Ireland, it was difficult for the first three years and mistakes were made. We didn't understand we had to create something that had a different or unique feel about it. We now know we have to deliver something in Scotland that no other channel is currently providing."

To that end Esslemont, among other senior figures at the Gaelic Media Service (GMS) - the government-funded body partnering with the BBC to run the channel - is developing a battle plan. Key to that plan is football. Esslemont plans to lure in an entire new audience by showing matches from the beautiful game's lower leagues, a strategy that paid dividends for TG4 in Ireland and S4C, the Welsh language channel. Other less high-profile sports - think the mountain biking world championships, held last year in Fort William, and of course shinty - are now being actively targeted by Esslemont and his team: "The great thing about live sport is that it is very visual and we can then get people using Gaelic words from the commentary," he says, perhaps a little optimistically.

News will be provided by the BBC, the hub based in Inverness but with a studio in Stornoway. There will also be documentaries - "the kind of good Scottish stories that audiences want to see but are perhaps not best served with by the current channels" - and plenty of music shows, including everything from contemporary Scottish rock to excerpts from Celtic Connections. Esslemont says he has 300 hours of programmes ready and waiting but that "all the primetime stuff will be commissioned between now and the launch. We are now actively looking for ideas."

Calum Angus Mackay, the company director of MacTV - an independent producer of Gaelic television programmes based in Stornoway - is confident. He says attracting the "man from Coatbridge", as GMS chief executive Donald Campbell puts it, will pose no significant problem for Esslemont. "Obviously the schedule is still being discussed but there have been plenty of conversations between the GMS, the BBC and independents like ourselves to make sure all kinds of key audiences are being served by this channel," he says.

Mackay's optimism is understandable: 50% of the budget for new programmes must be spent with independent producers, in the hope the cash will support and sustain programme making across the Highlands and Islands and beyond.

Others are not so supportive. In total, Gaelic services are expected to cost £20.8 million each year. The funding breaks down as follows: £10.1m from the Scottish government via the GMS, specifically for the new digital service, and £10.7m from the BBC, comprising £3.5m for the new channel, and £7.2m already being spent on existing services, such as Radio Gaidheal and Gaelic programming on BBC Two.

Critics think that is too much to splash out on a minority interest and point out there are more Polish speakers in Scotland than Gaels. Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley and member of the Westminster culture committee, voices the concerns of many: "When the BBC is cutting back its news and current affairs operation and people are losing their jobs, they should not be being spending this kind of money."

Jeremy Peat, the Scottish representative on the BBC Trust - the corporation's governing body - takes a more balanced view. He says it is his job to make sure "the public gets the best deal out of every licence fee pound spent". As the new station is a partnership between the BBC and the GMS, the project was subject to the public value test to which all new BBC services are subjected, and it was the trust's announcement that it had passed that gave the channel the go-ahead.

Nevertheless, the trust was not wholly convinced by the public benefit of the channel, which led Peat to place several caveats. The station will be broadcast on cable, satellite and broadband but not on Freeview, which was always the pre-switchover intention, with the trust arguing that the station is not yet worth the extra £4m the BBC claims it would cost the corporation to include it on Freeview.

Peat has made it clear he wants to see current Gaelic speakers served well, the channel's educational commitments to get Scots learning Gaelic met, and non-Gaels tuning in regularly. He wants to see that achieved by 2010 when the service will be reviewed again in time for digital switchover.

He admits that's a lot to do in a very short space of time: "It's not ideal but the timing of the launch of the channel is for them to decide upon. We were thinking it might be early summer but if it is later then that's up to them."

Esslemont says they hope to launch the station properly in August or September, a further postponement for a channel that was originally sketched out in Westminster's 2003 Communications Act and is at least two years late after protracted infighting between the two partners.

Although the BBC and the GMS are now making mutually assured noises about the "positivity and energy going forward", it has not always been thus. The Beeb has behaved like the big boy unused to sharing his toys, and the GMS has been the plucky and sometimes paranoid kid who refuses to be patronised. It is hard to imagine that this backdrop will not be part of the huge challenge facing Esslemont.

Angus MacNeil, the Western Isles MP, is one Gael who has lost his patience: "If it got going yesterday that wouldn't be soon enough for me."

Although delighted plans are now finally in motion, MacNeil questions the scale of the task placed at Esslemont's feet: "It's a tall order. You have to ask yourself if any other station would be asked to do so much in so little time?"

Esslemont says he has seen it all before and is determined to see it through. In the minority language television business, perseverance is the name of the game. "The Welsh language channel needed a hunger strike from a man called Gwynfor Evans before Thatcher agreed to let it go ahead. The Irish channel TG4 was in various reports and commissions for at least 10 years and, rumour has it, only got through by the slip of a civil servant's pen, so delays and challenges are only to be expected," he says.