They are designed for use in a high signal strength area, and in many cases you will get better reception in the TV set by simply cutting the cable off right at the base of the unit, and taping the cheap and nasty coax cable they use to the wall, where it will pick up enough signal. the loop is basically an inductor across the dipole ( well, sort of) and does provide some lower loss at some band, and at some it is a magnetic loop, but the biggest pick up is the flylead.
There are quite a few cases where i had to replace all the RF interconnects between the antenna and the TV set with better quality ccable and decent connectors, as there was visible ghosting, caused by the signal from the external antenna being delayed by the downlead, and the cheap connector wires picking up enough signal in the house to be the stronger signal in some cases, though with bad multipath reflections.
TLDR, rabbit ears work if you can look out the window and see the transmitter unaided.