BBC director-general Mark Thompson has said Scotland's independence referendum is a "gigantic" story and claimed its coverage will not be affected by job cuts at the Corporation.
He told MSPs yesterday that it was "one of the biggest things the BBC will ever do anywhere – it's a story of immense interest and importance".
Mr Thompson's comments came as he was quizzed by Holyrood's Culture Committee over 120 job cuts planned at BBC Scotland by 2017 as part of 16% budget cuts.
He told the committee the referendum was a "massive Scottish event and a massive UK event".
"It goes to the heart of the destiny of Scotland as a nation and it goes to the heart of the destiny of the United Kingdom and will be of very considerable interest to our audiences across the UK and around the world," he said.
Mr Thompson said coverage of the referendum would need "very substantial" resources and the BBC would be telling the story around the world in at least 30 languages.
He said: "One of the issues that we're working through right now is the obvious point, which is that we're going to need the right level of journalistic effort, both in Scotland and at UK level and we want to make sure we're thinking about that carefully now, as we're making staff reductions, so we don't end up, as it were, having to re-hire people for this very big event.
"It will be one of the largest domestic stories the BBC has covered in recent years and will be properly resourced."
The committee was told that the BBC currently collects £300 million in licence fees north of the Border, with £200m of that being spent in Scotland on Scottish services, network television for the whole of UK, overheads and infrastructure.
The remaining £100m is Scottish licence fee payers' contribution to all of the broadcaster's other services.
Mr Thompson also defended the budget and jobs cuts, which are part of the Corporation's Delivering Quality First strategy.
Committee convener Stewart Maxwell said it had been reported the budget of Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland (GMS) programme was equivalent to Jeremy Paxman's salary.
Mr Thompson said the GMS budget was very substantially higher that Mr Paxman's salary.
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