Sara Cox signs '£1m deal' to stay at Radio 1

Sara Cox, Radio 1's breakfast show DJ, has joined the premier league of broadcasting's high earners after signing a three-year deal believed to be worth £1m, despite losing 700,000 listeners during the past year.

Cox, 27, will be earning even more than Jeremy Vine, the 37-year-old Newsnight presenter turned Radio 2 DJ, who is to replace Jimmy Young at the start of next year on a salary of £250,000 a year.

Her predecessor, Zoe Ball, earned a reported annual salary of £150,000 for presenting the radio breakfast show and the Saturday morning children's television show Live and Kicking.

Ball, a newcomer to radio when she took over, was hailed as the station's saviour and went on to increase the listening figures by 2 million.

Cox took them even higher at first – to a record 7.6 million last year. This has now fallen to 6.9 million, but the substantial rise in Cox's salary indicates that the station has not lost its faith in her.

The Bolton-born former model said: "Radio 1 is the best place I have ever worked. The breakfast show means such a lot to me, especially the listeners who I love, so I'm over the moon."

A Radio 1 spokesman said: "Radio 1 is the perfect home for an original talent like Sara Cox, so we are really pleased that she has signed to the station for a further three years."

Recent figures show that the station has lost 800,000 listeners over the past year, with 700,000 turning off the breakfast show.