Astral Media has rejected the offer to provide a city-wide bike sharing system that would allow for more advertising on the City road allowance. We covered the issue back in December.
Astral Media’s street furniture contract with the City of Toronto, for which it vastly overbid, has turned into an unmitigated financial disaster for the company; [...]

Last week in Eye Weekly, Jonathan Goldsbie exposed meetings that were taking place between Astral Media and City Councillor Adrian Heaps regarding the City’s attempts to develop a bike rental program. It appears that Councillor Heaps unilaterally decided to meet with Astral Media and asked Astral for a non-competitive proposal for bike rentals; Heaps also [...]

In Spiral Beach Caught In Erich Genseberger’s EcoMedia Shakedown Scheme we told you about how the billboard company that is responsible for maintaining Toronto’s garbage bins is issuing legally-questionable invoices to bill posters.
Well it turns out that EcoMedia is issuing similar invoices to the City of Toronto per this Staff Report:

See, when it snows in [...]

Spiral Beach (MySpace, Website), a poppy local band, is the latest casualty in EcoMedia’s shakedown of postering in the City of Toronto.
The band had the temerity to place the above poster on “a number” of Toronto’s privately owned garbage bins and received this shakedown letter [PDF] from EcoMedia’s Erich Genseberger demanding $1,470:

EcoMedia’s contract with the [...]

Torontoist is reporting this document today on their web site. It’s the complete scoring of the “street furniture” RFP.
Note that Astral Media gets a 30 out of 30 on Financial Element.
Clear Channel gets a 13.3 out of 30; and CBS Outdoor, the incumbent, the company that knows how much money these transit shelter ads make, [...]