ABSTRACT
This chapter opens with a critical reflection on the concept of adaptation and continues with a general overview of media adaptation. The concept of adaptation of organisms to their environments is central in evolutionary biology. Adaptation processes can occur when an emerging medium, which has still not developed its own grammar or completely defined its production and reception processes, tries to conquer its own territory in the media ecosystem, or when an old medium attempts to survive adverse conditions by mimicking the new media surrounding it. The emergence of new communication technologies introduces changes into the media ecosystem that in many cases radically transform the rules of the game. Research on television was very intensive in the 1990s, but it was almost totally TV-centred research. Few researchers analysed the transformations of television from the perspective of new media.
