Snap and crackle and pop music The rewards are striking. A 2005 study found that 75 per cent of morning listeners would switch on the radio purely because they knew their favourite broadcaster was on air. More than half said they would be likely to buy products advertised on a favourite show. "Breakfast is the highest profile slot of the day," according to Steve Orchard, a former senior executive at Classic FM. It's where we make our money. It's the Mount Everest of radio listening. Not that breakfast-time broadcasting is an easy number for anyone. Only a few have truly cracked the art. Even fewer, if they are honest, quite understand how they did it. Sir Terry Wogan, the 73-year-old Jesuit-educated son of a Limerick grocer, still going strong on Radio 2, remains the most conspicuous master. "My success on the radio was a mystery to those who ran the BBC," Wogan admitted in his autobiography. They knew I was successful from the audience figures, from the awards, from the public appearances, they just didn't know why. Chris Tarrant served 18 years on Capital Radio's breakfast show, but he wasn't an immediate success. A former station executive recalls: "It took two years of testing at breakfast and lunchtime before he got critical and ratings success." Forty-five years ago, when Tony Blackburn launched Radio 1"s breakfast show with the words: "Good morning everyone, and welcome to the exciting new sound of Radio 1," the excitement was not widely shared. Serious pop fans were still seething over the Wilson government's assault on their beloved pirate radio ships, and saw the BBC's hastily assembled alternative as an establishment fob-off. Beyond them were many licence-fee payers who took the view that the BBC - in those days still suffused with Reithian rigour - had no business running pop stations at all. With the pirates effectively sunk and no commercial competition, the Beeb had breakfast time to itself. Blackburn's programme regularly attracted up to 20 million listeners, allowing it to boast of being the world's most listened-to music radio programme. When commercial broadcasting arrived in 1973, the new stations recognised the importance of breakfast, but their emphasis was still on the music. It took the talented but self-regarding Chris Evans, hired by Radio 1"s controller Matthew Bannister, to change the game. What Evans proved was that at its core the breakfast show was more about talk than music. Sometimes he would talk for an hour without playing any records at all. Listeners occasionally complained about being late for work or the school run because they didn't want to miss what he was saying. But problems developed when he took to talking, at even greater length, about the shortcomings of his superiors at the BBC. Evans left the station in 1997, but a few years later he was back on BBC Radio, taking over from Wogan in Radio 2"s treasured breakfast slot in January 2010. For everyone at the breakfast radio table, today's pickings are smaller. Which, in a sense, makes them more valuable. Now there is not only competition from early morning television, but from a much wider range of radio stations as well as the internet. Yet Britons remain a nation of devoted radio-heads, with 91.7 per cent of the adult population tuning in at least once a week. Moyles has been bringing in an audience of just over seven million on the latest figures - down from 7.5 million last year, and well behind Evans on 9.23 million. That the BBC pair attract a joint audience not much smaller than the one Blackburn had with the field to himself is a remarkable testament to the power of breakfast radio. Now the Radio 1 baton passes to 27-year-old Nick "Grimmy" Grimshaw, a droopy-jawed northerner charged by his bosses with nothing more difficult than refashioning the nation's listening habits. Which will mean in effect knocking at least a couple of years off the show's age profile, while keeping the content just as the existing listeners like it. And satisfying everyone who thinks Moyles's geezerish vulgarity needs to be dispensed with. And overtaking Evans's Radio 2 show. And generally getting the ship back on course.