The circulation of scholarly information (aka popularisation) is something I have often pondered about, and I think it greatly varies with languages and cultures.
Here in France there is almost no direct communication between experts and the wider public except through occasional coverage by the media. The retelling is generally good, but limited to rare and isolated "headlines" with little further background. Spots of knowledge here and there amongst general ignorance -- but conscious ignorance. Inheritance of our Catholic past with a strong division between clergy and lay people? Language characteristics, which make practically all technical words (mostly Greek constructs) unintelligible for the vast majority of people? Perhaps a bit of all.
As far as Bible scholarship is concerned, only very recently have medium tools which have been available in English for over one century (such as interlinears, coded concordances like Strong's, etc.) been published for the sake of people who haven't learnt the Biblical languages. This is just not part of our intellectual tradition.
Moreover (although probably not unrelated to the above) Christian fundamentalism is ultra-minoritary and mostly foreign importation (JWs being probably the most visible brand). General education is secular, even in confessional schools, and religious teaching in the mainstream churches doesn't interfere with it (practically no "creationist" debate for instance)
But on the other hand biblical scholarship fails (and often doesn't even try) to influence confessional religious teaching.
A few years ago there was a fascinating documentary series on TV about the Gospel Passion narratives. Some of the top NT scholars (totally unknown from the public thus far) expressed themselves on the literary formation of the texts and traditions, etc. This raised quite a scandal and many parishioners went to their priests or pastors asking about it. Most often the response they got was "Well, there's nothing new here. If you are interested I can recommend you some books." Actually the pastors had been acquainted with critical scholarship through their training and by their further readings, but they had transmitted nothing of it -- either they didn't speak about it at all out of "pastoral concern" (not to hurt people's faith), or their allusions to it were too ambiguous to be understood. As a result the catechism was still taken literally and historically by most people as in the early 19th century. Without the media shortcut, which brought recent scholarship to the home of average believers for the very first time, bypassing the pastors, most people would have never realised what had been going on.
