Apparently not everybody was all that jazzed about watching the likes of "Chicago" and "The Pianist" win big during the Oscars telecast Sunday night.

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Early estimates from Nielsen Media Research show the audience for Sunday night's Oscars fell 15 percent from last year and could be the lowest ratings for the show ever.

The estimate is based on an overnight measure of the 55 biggest cities and is likely to drop once the rest of the country is included.

The award ceremony's network, ABC, estimates 37 million people saw "Chicago" win the Best Picture award -- its sixth prize -- in a 3.5 hour telecast that was about 30 minutes shorter than usual.

The Academy Awards were more subdued than usual, due to the war in Iraq. The academy was aware going into the ceremonies that ABC could pre-empt the show at anytime with breaking news development regarding the war. As it turned out, news anchorman Peter Jennings gave only a couple of brief updates during the night.

A top ABC official said, "It's hard to speculate what it was beyond the war coverage" that kept viewers away.

The audience has only been that low twice since records became available in 1974. The high-mark of more than 55 million viewers came in 1998, when "Titanic" won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture.

Sunday night's broadcasts saw several calls for peace from winners, with the exception of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.

Greeted onstage with a standing ovation for winning the Best Documentary Oscar for the gun-culture documentary "Bowling for Columbine," Moore drew loud boos and few cheers from the audience when he launched into a tirade against President George W. Bush, calling him a "fictitious president."