Carrie Underwood walked away as the big winner with six awards at the Inaugural American Country Awards on Fox. The show featured some killer performances, but not a whole lot in the line of awards. So how did the show stack up to the other slew of country music award shows?

On the plus side, the ACAs were overall high energy and filled with performances. I think Trace Adkins was the perfect choice for the host. For one, he's as country as country can be and you don't get the feeling with him that he's wearing the cowboy hat just for show. He was also very witty and very funny. If the ACAs come back for a year number two, I hope they keep Trace around as the host.

The first performance of the night set the tone in two ways. The first was when Trace Adkins introduced Blake Shelton as the guy that just won the Male Vocalist award over at one of those other country award shows. There were some running jokes through the night about the number of awards shows out there, and since the ACAs are the newest, I'm not really sure THEY should be the ones making the jokes. Anyway, Blake Shelton hit the stage and got the crowd immediately amped up with his song "Kiss My Country Ass." A perfect song to set the stage for a night of country music.

The best performances of the night went to Blake Shelton, Reba, Toby Keith and Keith Urban. We already covered that Shelton opened the show with attitude and that's just what the other three best performances brought to the table as well. Reba rocked the crowd with her hit "Turn On The Radio" which in my humble opinion was a much better choice than the Beyonce cover that she performed at the CMAs. While Reba can do a ballad like nobody's business, she truly shines when she brings the attitude to the stage. Artists everywhere can learn from her. Toby Keith performed "Bullets In The Gun" after he was awarded the Video Visionary award and Keith Urban wowed the crowed via satellite from Dallas with "Put You In A Song."

On to the negative side of the awards. First and foremost, I really and truly hated the way the awards were presented. With each award the artist was already onstage to perform when they were announced to the fans, robbing the fans of the moment that an artist finds out they've won really does take all the fun and excitement out of an awards show. Having them perform and then interview them? Kills the moment even more. I just don't think the system worked at all.

The "humor" or Jeff Dunham and Bubba J was just the kind of stuff that people who don't like country music think of when they think of country music. Do we really need this kind of lowest common denominator, hillbilly humor? To me it takes the industry down a peg.

My least favorite performance of the night came from Rascal Flatts. I was Twittering during the show and overall they were the least favored bunch of the night, with fans saying, pretty accurately, that they seemed to be phoning it in. They were very pitchy and the medley just seemed to go on way too long. Speaking of medleys, Alan Jackson's performance was a medley of his hits over the years and unfortunately didn't leave a lasting impression. I love Alan and his songs, but I'd much rather have gotten a full song than bits and pieces of a bunch of them. Maybe the Greatest Hits awards called for a medley, I don't know.

Overall the American Country Awards put on a good show when it came to the performances and missed a bit elsewhere. I'd like to see them back next year with a three hour format so we can actually get some more awards in and give Adkins a bit more time to entertain the crowd.

You can see the full list of winners here: http://www.twangwire.com/content/2010/12/06/219/aca-rewind

What did you think of the show? Sound off in the comments below!