Being at the end of the alphabet doesn't help them on DAB. Whoever came up with the name Absolute is a genius in that regard.
Not necessarily, if the station list is alphabetical then Virgin probably appears next to Absolute in most areas
Most DAB only stations are in mono. LBC in particular is horrendous - all the presenters sound like they have a cold.
That won't be anything to do with being mono, it'll be more to do with bitrate/sample rate etc.
Makes sense for LBC to be in mono - the majority of it's output is either one person in a studio talking to people on the phone. You don't need stereo for that