I don't think that is wholely the case. Many of the Reformers deeply studied the Church Fathers after all. I myself enjoy history, so have read a fair bit too - and I am still Protestant, although with a lot of sympathy for High Church tendencies.
I think what happens is that many of the smaller Protestant denominations lack the sense of deep roots, as they are not part of large global Churches. Further, low churches tend to have less adornment, or something someone's aunt made for the church, so also they don't feel old or established. I think that is why Baptists like to posit some form of surreptitious Baptist movement suppressed by the Catholics, or such. It is part and parcell of the idea of Sola Scriptura, that Tradition is relegated - and thus Protestants don't necessarily feel that tradition there, with a big disconnect from Jesus and the Apostles to the beginning of their denomination in the Reformation or into the last 200 or so years.
Lutherans or Anglicans with the continued Apostolic succession, though denied by the Roman Church, don't have this listless feeling. Those that care about the history and roots of the Church, that will actually read history, are in many ways thus predisposed to look for this continuance. It is because the Reformation is portrayed as a big break, instead of something in similar vein to previous reformations within the Church, like the Clunaic reforms or the Franciscan. It is in my opinion, an artifact of the type of person that reads Church history, that they may tend to bow the knee to Rome or Constantinople. I doubt that if you took a general Protestant congregation and started intensively teaching Church history, that you'd suddenly swell the local Catholic Parish much.
