Brightcove, a venture backed video distribution company, unveiled a new free service called the Brightcove Network, that lets content owners  launch their own commercial Internet video channels at no cost and generate revenue through advertising and video download sales.

The service is free, but  Brightcove gets to place ads on your videos and then shares the revenue with you 50-50.  There  is also a service that  enables you to sell your content and share the revenues with Brightcove.

Brightcove sure knows how to work the PR on this given that the service seems a lot like other services like Revver which have  been available for some time.  They managed to get placement in the Wall Street Journal and in high traffic blogs like TechCrunch.

I think the real story might be about BrightCove’s PR company SutherlandGold Group’s ability to get the press to think BrightCove is making news.