Check out the current video listing and make a donation to help digitize more of the archive.

About Pete Parisi and the archive

Peter E. Parisi was born in New Jersey in 1947, but to his faithful followers, he is a St. Louisan, and his World Wide Magazine program defines the St. Louis experience.

Parisi came to St. Louis in 1971 as a Program Director at KADI-FM. Eventually, he lost his radio job and became a taxi driver, which helped foster his creative spirit that eventually went into his World Wide Magazine pilot of sorts, "Everyday I Use Up a Year's Worth of Luck" in 1985.

The St. Louis area got to know P.E.P., as he was affectionately known, through World Wide Magazine, his Public Access TV program, which hit the air in 1986 on Double Helix, the local public access station. He exposed the underbelly of St. Louis through his odd cast of characters including The Mad Russian, Big Mike, Hung Wei Lo, The Hoosiermooners, The Feeney Brothers, Vince and Marty, Watt Davis, Miss Cathy, and countless others.

The interesting thing is that during his 15 years on the air, his editing skills, use of music, and sense of humor kept folks watching. Looking back, there are certainly problematic elements to the show, most notably racism and sexism, which can foster discussion and criticism. It does remain a fine time capsule of that period and an educational tool of sorts to teach people about the area.

In September of 2020, 36 boxes of tapes from Pete Parisi's own archives were discovered by the family of his girlfriend. These were entrusted upon Jim Varagona, the admin of the World Wide Magazine fan page on Facebook, and uploader of the most WWM onto the web. Some of this has been digitized and can be found on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThePeteParisiArchives 

The remaining tapes are 3/4" U-Matic broadcast tapes, many that have gathered mold through the years. The goal of this archive is to digitize these and make them available to be viewed for free by the public for entertainment, criticism, and discussion, but this does require time and resources.