A family who live on a hill which will be the first inhabited place on earth to see the millennium sunrise have sold the television rights to New Zealand's government for 200,000 NZ dollars (£78,760),they said yesterday.
The Lanauze family owns Hapeka Hill on Pitt Island, part of the Chatham Islands, 800 kilometres (500 miles) east of the capital Wellington. Just 55 people, several thousand sheep and tens of thousands of seals live on Pitt Island.
The family said Cable News Network (CNN) had offered 500,000 dollars for the rights. But Ruka Lanauze said the payment by the New Zealand government's millennium office for exclusive television rights would still allow the family to negotiate deals for still photography and Internet images.
"We got what we wanted, and in the end they got what they wanted," Lanauze said. "They were very lucky to get it. They're pretty lucky we are patriotic sort of people."
The money will be paid into the Bevan Lanauze Memorial Charitable Trust for the benefit of the islanders. Bevan Lanauze, Ruka's brother, died in a fishing accident. In May, another family member, landowner Ken Lanauze, said the government had failed to offer enough money to acquire the exclusive rights.
London's Royal Geographical Society has decreed that 2000's first rays will fall on Hapeka Hill. It will be another 40 minutes before the sun's rays hit Mount Hikurangi on the mainland.
There, the Ngati Porou tribe have been offered around 400,000 dollars from the millennium office for a planned dawn ceremony for 2,500 people, including 400 official guests.
In both places, New Zealand's TV3 channel plans to broadcast live to a global television audience expected to total one billion people. Ken Lanauze has previously warned that broadcasters would be taking a gamble at dawn on January 1st because there was a good chance that Pitt Island would be shrouded in mist.