242 - Nearer the North: Australia in the King Projection
For cartophiles, the main problem with this map is not that interviewer Larry King’s head covers most of Europe, or that the bulky figure of his guest, moviemaker Michael Moore, obscures much of America. The problem is not what it hides, but what it misplaces.
See the huge island continent of Australia? Well, you shouldn’t. Most of it should be hidden beneath the desk, in between Messrs King and Moore. But Oz seems to have lost its mooring, drifting north to the latitudes of the Philippines, immediately off Australia’s west coast, and Hawaii, not far from the Queensland coast (but obscured by Moore’s black sweater – an unfortunate choice and probably proof he’s not a regular viewer of the show).
The island of New Guinea, to Australia’s north in real life, has gone along for the ride in this fantasy world of the King Projection and will, if present drifting persists, bump into either the Kamchatka or Alaska peninsulas.
Why did Mr King deem it necessary to move Australians closer to the region they call the Near North (and many others still call the Far East)? Maybe it’s that talkshow décors share with nature in general that they abhor a vacuum. That would explain the Brazil-shaped blob behind Mr King, headed for Europe and soon colliding with Ireland, filling out the otherwise glitterless Atlantic Ocean.
Thanks to Josh for sending in the picture, by the look of it a grab off YouTube.
Aha! That could explain the really hot and humid weather we’ve been having this summer in Melbourne.
Comment by Snail — February 10, 2008 @
Psk. This is not one single World Map with Australia in the wrong place; it’s four separate maps — left to right: South America, Eurasia, Australia, and North America. All are at different scales. Oceans are disregarded. And the big question: where’s Africa?
Comment by mollymooly — February 10, 2008 @
[...] According to CNN, no less. See here, Australia is north of the equator. (Thanks to Strange Maps). [...]
Pingback by CoreEcon » Blog Archive » We are moving North — February 10, 2008 @
I never noticed how fantastically terrible the map on Larry King Live is … wow.
Comment by The Hazean — February 10, 2008 @
Africa is hidden behind Mr. King.
And I think the slab over Australia is Paupau/New Guinea
Comment by godozo — February 10, 2008 @
Saturday Night Live used to have some terrible maps on the Weekend Update skits.
Comment by rek — February 10, 2008 @
Still looks better than most people’s interpretation of Texas!
Comment by Jay — February 10, 2008 @
http://www.silvercreekentertainment.net/aruba/larry_king-garrison_480.jpg
There’s a photo where you can pretty clearly see that the Larry King map is more of a “scroll of continents” or something because South America isn’t even connected to anything.
Comment by Aaron — February 10, 2008 @
Well, continental plates are drifting. This is the place where Australia will be in 50 millions years.
Comment by Krysztof von Murphy — February 10, 2008 @
@6 I used to love the wonky weekend update maps. I always wondered if they were just drawn from memory…
Comment by surlyben — February 10, 2008 @
There’s no room for Africa behind King, and the photo Aaron links to shows that, too. Mollymooly asks a good question: Where is Africa?
Comment by Keera — February 10, 2008 @
Evidently nowhere in the King Map.
Shows what I get for being rigidly logical…
Comment by godozo — February 10, 2008 @
simply….lol
Comment by George Silva — February 10, 2008 @
¡Here’s Africa!
http://heguido.blogspot.com/2008/01/me-dijeron-que-en-el-reino-del-revs.html
(This was taken from one of the two most important newspapers in Argentina.)
Comment by Heguido — February 10, 2008 @
This might help explain it:
http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/australia.shtml
Comment by t.r. mcloughlin — February 10, 2008 @
If you watch the video ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=LsZxsR1KXxM ), you can see that Africa is behind Moore’s shoulders, at the right of North America.
Is not a single map (as said mollymooly). It’s a space where there are the single maps of continents in random order.
Comment by Mizar — February 10, 2008 @
interesting justaposition with Michael Moore’s name and “80 seized pets hurled off a bridge”
Comment by ted — February 10, 2008 @
I thought it was the most factually accurate aspect of Larry King’s show.
Comment by Rubrick — February 11, 2008 @
where’s japan?
Comment by Tom Veil — February 11, 2008 @
I never could watch Larry King. Not because I don’t agree with CNN’s political stance (I’m more of a “liberal pinko commie” myself anyways, so I enjoy CNN
) but because the map has ALWAYS bugged me, so much so that I pay more attention to it than the program. Even realizing that it’s just a “scroll of continents” as @Aaron nicely put it, there’s still lots of inaccuracies on the continental maps themselves.
Comment by David — February 12, 2008 @
Amazingly, the fake news show has a more accurate map than the real one (if you can call Larry King “news”):
http://goupstate.us/UserFiles/Image/SNL.jpg
Comment by Jason W — February 12, 2008 @
Any reality squeezed between those two is likely to be distorted
Comment by ozymandiaz — February 12, 2008 @
Another example of buggy worldmaps in TV-programs can be found here: http://www.nrc.nl/multimedia/archive/00079/De_kijkers_vasthoud_79813a.jpeg or here: http://www.bvn.nl/images/assets/12758117
In the popular Dutch daily talkshow ‘De wereld draait door’ this background is also bugging me. Australia is glued to Asia. The Mediterranean Sea is just rectangular. The Caribean is completely ignored and what’s up with that only bulb between Greenland and Europe? Is it representing Iceland or Great Britain?
Comment by Pieter — February 15, 2008 @
Fascinating. I’d never noticed this. But then, I rarely watch Larry King.
Comment by -30- — February 15, 2008 @
Heh. It reminds me of The Day Today; “It’s War! I’m here on the Austro-Japan border…”
Comment by Jon — February 22, 2008 @
The problem here lies not with the map, but with the audience. Of course cartophiles would assume that the backdrop is meant to be either a complete world map or a series of continental maps. That’s pretty clearly not the case, however. The set is meant to reinforce the idea that the show is worldwide in scope. It’s a better design choice in this case to place the continents as closely as possible to their relative locations while not giving up size than to project an accurate world map at the expense of aesthetic concerns. In this case an accurate world map would be compressed in the center of the set, leaving vast swaths of negative space on the edges. King and his guests would obscure most of the map, unless it was crammed into the tiny space between them. It’s a sound decision to simply invoke the continents with symbols much less concrete than those found on actual maps.
Comment by Joshua — March 9, 2008 @
isn’t the point also that it shows the “important” places - the places where, perchance, the show can be run? Thus Africa can be hidden, but Australia not.
Comment by Cudzoziemiec — March 25, 2008 @
I took it upon myself to SAS/Graph software and create some maps similar to the ones on CNN, but with more topologically correct (size & position) land masses:
Here’s one similar to the one in this story:
http://robslink.com/SAS/democd28/dotmap.htm
And here’s one similar to another famous CNN background map:
http://robslink.com/SAS/democd28/cnn.htm
I’m happy to share the code, if anyone wants it …
http://robslink.com/SAS/democd28/aaaindex.htm
Comment by Robert — March 26, 2008 @