He left NBC News in 2005 to become founder and president of Freefall Productions, where he produces documentaries and serves as a media strategist and guest lecturer.
One of the WAAB newsmen, John Gallagher, said Sawyer had the sharpest mind and quickest wit he’d ever seen in a radio newsman and could write the news and commentary, as fast he could speak it.
(in a fit of emotion, when he was fired, or quit (still disputed according to WAAB newsman Mike Marcy) he left the WAAB studios calling owner George Gray a "chubby little clown"....the nickname stayed with employees until 4 years later when the radio stations were sold to a group headed by Dick Ferguson, Steve Marx and Bob Williams.
Sawyer moved into commercial television with Atlanta's WAGA-TV where he shared a Peabody Award in 1982 for Paradise Saved, a documentary on Cumberland Island.
"[8] In late 2007, while filming a documentary in Tanzania, Sawyer survived a helicopter crash in which he suffered a serious knee injury before hiking miles with other survivors to safety.