I don't think this is entirely a good model. People do want advancements and "breakthroughs" but the truth is that they don't understand any of those things. So if good science is happening, even in a small proportion, then your argument just suggests that reporting is more important. With respect to the public, I generally agree. But with this in mind, it would be probably more effective to just increase the total funding and randomly hand it out. You'd get bad apples like we do now and similar stories of ineffective spending -- where the public only understands "big number" -- but you'd also have more "successes" which are however you want to define them. That's because the truth of it is, for science progress is "business as usual." As for "breakthroughs" and "revolutions" well, those are exceedingly rare, and I'm willing to bet that several of the ones you are thinking of (not all) are less leaps and bounds than you perceive and more shoulders on "giants," where the "giants" are just several people in a trench coat.

So I don't get how this supports the current framework.