I guess my impression has been that there has been a net gain in minutes of air time mentioning UFO's in any context.
I'm not sure there's any comfort or huge significance to be taken from their being more "background" in a given story.
In a way, they become the more insideously injected into our culture as part of the norm, wallpaper, woodwork, given.
The UFO phenom appears to be permanent as background, among other phenoms as our common, public world becomes exponentially more complex.