HECHT, Justice.

. . . Defendant Stork operates ‘The Stork Club’, defendant Mayfair prepared and produced ‘The Stork Club Show’, defendant American Broadcasting telecast the show, and defendant Billingsley acted as a performer and master of ceremonies on the show.

Plaintiff earns his livelihood as the operator and manager of ‘The Toots Shor Restaurant’, with which The Stork Club competes.

During the show, the following conversation was telecast between Billingsley and one Brisson, a guest on the program, and plaintiff's picture was telecast in connection therewith:

‘Mr. Billingsley: I see, I would like to show you a few pictures taken here lately. The first-now, how did this picture get in here?

‘Mr. Brisson: That is Toots Shor and a man I don't know.

‘Mr. Billingsley: You want to know something?

‘Mr. Brisson: Want to know something? I saw Toots Shor, he's a good-looking fellow, isn't he?

‘Mr. Billingsley: Yes, he is. Want to know something? I wish I had as much money as he owes.

‘Mr. Brisson: Owes you or somebody else?

‘Mr. Billingsley: Everybody-oh, a lot of people.

‘Mr. Brisson: He doesn't owe me anything, but he is a good-looking fellow just the same. A little (indicating)-you know.

‘Mr. Billingsley: I wish I could agree with you.’

[. . .]

. . .That leaves for consideration the real problem in the case-whether the first cause of action based upon a telecast not read from a prepared script sounds in libel or in slander.

This precise question has not been passed upon by our appellate courts, nor apparently in any other jurisdiction. Hartmann v. Winchell, supra, held that the ‘utterance of defamatory remarks, read from a script into a radio microphone and broadcast, constitute[s] publication of libel’, . . . It expressly did not reach the question ‘whether broadcasting defamatory matter which has not been reduced to writing should be held to be libelous because of the potentially harmful and widespread effects of such defamation.’ . . . Fuld, J., concurring, held that it should ‘because of the likelihood of aggravated injury inherent in such broadcasting’. . .

Sorensen v. Wood, . . . likewise hold libelous radio broadcasts read from a written script; Meldrum v. Australian Broadcasting Co. Ltd. . . . to the contrary, was specifically rejected in Hartmann v. Winchell, . . .

[. . .]

When account is taken of the vast and far-flung audience reached by radio today-often far greater in number than the readers of the largest metropoltan newspaper . . . it is evident that the broadcast of scandalous utterances is in general as potentially harmful to the defamed person's reputation as a publication by writing. That defamation by radio, in the absence of a script or transcription, lacks the measure of durability possessed by written libel, in nowise lessens its capacity for harm. Since the element of damage is, historically, the basis of the common-law action for defamation . . . , and since it is as reasonable to presume damage from the nature of the medium employed when a slander is broadcast by radio as when published by writing, both logic and policy point the conclusion that defamation by radio should be actionable per se. . . .

[. . .]

It is true that ‘the delivery of the same speech over an amplifier to a vast audience in a stadium’ would still be treated as a slander despite the fact that it may cause infinitely more damage than a writing seen by few . . . But such a speech falls so inescapably within the conventional definition of slander that in the forgoing situation ‘abolition of the line between libel and slander would . . . be too extreme a break with the past to be achieved without legislation.’ . . . But it does not follow that a court is equally powerless when dealing with the new media of radio and television.

[. . .]

Our own courts experience no difficulty in applying the law of libel to the new instrumentality of the motion picture because ‘in the hands of a wrongdoer these devices have untold possibilities toward producing an effective libel’.

[. . .]

Accordingly the motion to dismiss is denied as to the first three causes of action but granted as to the fourth. Settle order.

[. . .]