That's the question - answered affirmatively - in this article in the Guardian. (HT: Marc B.) I have my doubts about this, as there are so many more serious players around the world than there were back in the alleged salad days of the Fischer-Spassky and several Karpov-Korchnoi matches. Maybe there is less newspaper coverage, but various alternative explanations for that phenomenon come to mind. To take three: the Cold War angle is gone, newspapers are dying and their space is at more of a premium, and interested players get all the info they want from the web - the bird cage liner is no longer needed.
It would be nice to have more newspaper coverage than we do, to recruit more "civilians" to the game, but its absence doesn't seem to me an indication that the broader world has lost interest in chess. Another indication that this is false is the plethora of popular books that came out about Bobby Fischer from the time of his move to Iceland through his death in 2008; also, there have been a spate of recent chess movies having nothing to do with Fischer over the past five years.
I do think the author is right that Deep(er) Blue's win over Kasparov in 1997 and the strength of computers in general has had an effect, insofar as it has demystified the aura of super-intelligence traditionally (and somewhat wrongly) associated with chess. But only partially, and again, this seems to me at most a story about traditional media coverage rather than the worldwide popularity of the game.
Agreed?