A former contestant of The Apprentice television show is to set up what is believed to be Scotland's first national internet television station.

Sharon McAllister, 31, who last year appeared on the BBC programme which features tycoon Sir Alan Sugar, and Jackie Smith, 36, a former BBC director who has worked on Newsnight and Horizon, will launch the Scottish Internet Television site at the end of the month. It will go live on a Wednesday and viewers will be able to watch what they want when they want until the next programme the following week.

There will be six channels and Ms McAllister, formerly head of enterprise at Forth Valley College, said a key factor would be involvement from the public, with submissions encouraged.

Both women, who live in Dollar, Clackmannanshire, set up the project with redundancy money after leaving their jobs last April. They hope advertising will fund the venture in the long term.

Ms McAllister said: "All programmes will have a strong Scottish focus. One channel is about people such as celebrities or business people and we are going to interview them and find out about their interests in life.

"We have a style channel so we will be doing makeovers and we've got fashion and beauty. We have also hooked up with some of the vintage clothes shops in Scotland, so it is clothes you can't get anywhere else, not just high street stuff.

"We will have a music channel which is for up-and-coming bands to put their demos on and we are also going to try to cover concerts. For example, we will have an interview with Kerry from the X-Factor who will be releasing a single soon."

Lifestyle programmes will look at the home and fitness, and there will be a link with Knockhill racing circuit to show events.

Ms McAllister added: "We will also have a business section where we will review last year's Apprentice with some of the contestants and we will talk about the new Apprentice.

"We will be doing discussions about all the business programmes on television and we will be making our own business programmes with Scottish businesses.

"We also have a section a bit like YouTube where viewers can put on their own clips, but we will try to keep a little bit more control on that.

"What we are hoping with the whole philosophy of the station is that the public get involved in the programmes. We are currently more of a passive viewer where we don't get involved in television but we want our viewers to be actively involved in the programmes we make." The website will have some features from January 17 but will go live on January 24.

In 2005, Glasgow became the first city in the world to launch its own dedicated broadband internet television channel. Glasgow.tv was set up as a special promotional channel for the city around the globe.