iOS 8 status bar background orientation in landscape mode

Question

In iOS8, in the viewDidLoad method of my viewController I set the main view programatically using the following code:

CGRect appRect = [[UIScreen mainScreen] applicationFrame];
rootView = [[RootView alloc] initWithFrame: appRect];
[self setView: rootView];

The app only runs in landscape left mode (I control this from the plist file of the application). This is what the view looks like after it set it:

Even though the app is in landscape mode, the white bar that should be under the status bar appears as if the app is in portrait mode. Any thoughts on what might be causing this?

Edit: Running this:

NSLog(@"%@",NSStringFromCGRect([[UIApplication sharedApplication] statusBarFrame]));

outputs: {{0, 0}, {1024, 20}}

Edit: I added a background color for the root view:

rootView.backgroundColor = [UIColor greenColor];

This is what the app looks like now:

Answer 1

The problem in my case was that in my appdelegate the my - (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application method: I wasn't setting the root view controller. Instead I was doing this:

viewController = [[BoardViewController alloc] init];
[window makeKeyAndVisible];
[window addSubview: [viewController view]];

Once I changed that the root view frame covered the whole window and the status bar background was where it was supposed to be:

viewController = [[BoardViewController alloc] init];
[window makeKeyAndVisible];
window.rootViewController = viewController;

I got the idea from this answer: iOS 8 - Launching the application in Landscape mode