Buch grew up in
Saint Louis, Missouri, and attended
Washington University. In the early 1940s she relocated to New York City, where she had taken acting classes and appeared in some off-Broadway productions. In July 1941 she was hired by
CBS for a temporary job as receptionist. She transferred to the fledgling
CBS Television two weeks after the
Federal Communications Commission allowed commercial TV broadcasts in 1941. With
Gil Fates as producer and host, she was scorekeeper on
CBS Television Quiz the earliest U.S.
live television game show. "I had seen TV at the
World's Fair, but I had no idea this existed in New York. CBS was a radio network," Buch told a reporter from the
Asheville Citizen-Times in 2008. Along with
CBS Television Quiz, she helped coordinate the CBS television news coverage of the attack on
Pearl Harbor. When CBS live TV broadcasts were
suspended in 1942, Buch began producing and directing U.S. Navy training films. She returned to CBS in 1944 when their live television broadcasts resumed and was promoted to director in 1945. On June 25, 1951, she directed the commercials on
Premiere, the first commercial
color TV program to be broadcast in the United States. Later that same week she began the job of producer-director for the first two color TV series to be broadcast,
The World is Yours, and
Modern Homemakers. She also directed the early television talk show,
Mike and Buff (1951–1953), which featured
Mike Wallace and his then-wife
Buff Cobb. In 1949 she married Bill Buch, whom she had met in Florida while making Navy training films. She resigned from CBS in 1954 to be a full-time homemaker. ==References==