To me, this sounds a lot like the directional flow of toilets flushing. I'd have to see this as an actual experiment before I can be convinced of what the webopedia page is claiming.

Check out my previous comment on the time a friend and I watch his TV upside down. There was zero difference that I remember.

Consider where most of the monitors are shipped from. Did they send "southern hemisphere" specific televisions and crt monitors? And what happens at the equator?

Could your monitor have been fritzed on the flight? Did it work normally when you brought it back?

This would actually be a fantastic YouTube video, whether it debunks or proves the claim being equally interesting.

This is simply not true. If it were, then a monitor at the equator would be ruined merely by rotating it to face east instead of west, or north instead of south. They would have needed to sell four different monitors, to accommodate customers who were going to face their monitors in different directions. Even away from the equator most of the magnetic field points north/south rather than into or away from the Earth. More likely vibration during shipping defocused your monitor somewhat; a TV–repair shop probably could have fixed it.

It's much more likely that your TV suffered in-transit knocks and bumps that rendered it out of alignment, and too out of alignment to be able to be re-aligned.

I used to move 20-inch CRTs around in the office and have to degauss them. But stationary ones also needed this and the built-in coil was great.

I'm more inclined to blame that on the buzzy neon tube lights overhead, and the computers sitting under them.