Sure we don't have enough readers on the blockchain, but it's not the blockchains fault. In fact, the steem blockchain encourages readers to come over here to comment and share their opinions on things they've read.

A big problem is the sign up process, the manual sign up is a bad joke.
A bigger problem I see is the price for an account creation, especially when the STEEM price gets higher. You can't expect someone to pay for an account today. How will account creation be done if Steemit doesn't pay for it in exchange for your private informations?

The blogger/reader ratio problem can be fixed if "Big Guys" come over here and start using this blockchain as a twitter replacement (busy.org has great potential for that) or to upload their videos (DTube). This could lead to a snowball effect with thousands of consumers joining the blockchain. But this again will lead to the sign up problem if thousands of new people need to create an account here.

I can see a fix for the account creation problem. Many big guys have votes worth much more than the account creation fee. Some invitation system with a small voting power sacrifice shouldn't be that hard to implement.

I think the quality problem will fix itself when more readers/consumers join the blockchain, because you will have people actually reading and voting comments, instead of just people trying to get a lucky upvote for dishonest flattery.
When the mass of small upvotes outruns the income of circle jerkering, quality will go up.