Absolute openness promised for relaunch.

NEWLY-REBRANDED NATIONAL STATION ABSOLUTE RADIO is cheekily aping the price comparison advertising campaigns of high-street supermarkets as it unveils an extended weekly playlist.

The station, which today (Monday) loses its Virgin Radio moniker on air to officially become Absolute Radio, has unveiled it is expanding its current playlist from around 20 to 25 tracks each week as part of a policy of playing a wider variety of tracks.

However, in a new twist the weekly-published playlist, which will be available on the station's website, will not only record how many times Absolute is playing each track on the list but also monitor and make public the number of plays the same tracks are receiving at rival stations such as Radio One, Radio Two and and Xfm.

Clive Dickens, chief operating officer of the station's parent company TIML Radio, directly likens the new policy to supermarkets such as Asda and Tesco or insurance company Norwich Union, which in their advertising directly compare their prices with those of their rivals.

"The reason why Norwich Union have done that is they don't want people going on to price comparison websites and the reason we want to ...