The fourth season of the reality game show Pinoy Big Brother, subtitled Unlimited aired on ABS-CBN for 155 days from October 29, 2011, to March 31, 2012. This was the last and separate civilian season to air after the three editions were merged into one season, starting from . This season is currently the longest civilian season to date and broke the 's record for the longest duration by three more weeks and also ranked as one of the show's longest seasons worldwide as of that time, only surpassed by a number of seasons held in Germany, until this season's duration was later beaten by on 2016 and later on which currently holds the record, with 268 days.
It is the only regular season with a male winner: Slater Young. Pamu Pamorada was the runner-up, while Joseph Biggel, and Paco Evangelista were the finalists.
Auditions for the season started in Metro Manila on March 4, 2011, at the SM Mall of Asia where around 10,000 people attended. Show director Lauren Dyogi said the turnout at the Mall of Asia audition was the largest in the show's history. Other auditions were held at several key cities in the Philippines from March to July 2011, plus overseas auditions in Tokyo and Los Angeles. The total number of aspirants for the season, as claimed by the show, was 30,789. A total of 37 housemates entered for this season; fourteen on opening night, fifteen on Day 8, six on Day 15, and two on Days 23 and 25.
In the run-up to the premiere, a special weekday afternoon primer entitled Pinoy Big Brother: The Audition Stories started airing on October 24, 2011. It featured several participants whose audition stories caught the interest of the producers. The afternoon primer lasted until November 4, 2011. It eventually gave way to the new show, Pinoy Big Brother: UnliDay, the day main program. The said program shows the latest happenings of the Day Housemates from the Industrial House.
Toni Gonzaga and Bianca Gonzalez reprised their hosting stints for the show, together with runner-up Robi Domingo.
For the season, the exterior of the House was slightly tweaked to have slotted walls and minor modifications, but still keeping the yellow and blue color scheme. There are five areas for this season: four Houses and a special area. Two of the houses, the Industrial and Luxury Houses, are connected via a secret hallway first revealed on Day 22 and fully opened on Day 65.
A total of fourteen housemates entered the House on Day 1, thirteen official housemates plus a sub-official housemate acting as a "mole" in a task to become the fourteenth official housemate. That sub-official housemate was chosen by lottery from a pool of 30 reserved housemates. These are the auditionees who were shortlisted for the show, but did not make the official cut.
All thirteen official housemates plus the sub-official "mole" housemate, chosen via random sampling, entered the House on Day 1 (October 29, 2011). A second batch of housemates entered the House on Day 8, although those assigned to the Industrial House were not physically inside until the next day. Eight reserved housemates entered on Days 15, 23 and 25. The ages indicated were the housemates' ages upon their entrance to the House.
A grand total of 37 housematesâÂÂthe third most number of housemates in the Philippine franchise behind ' season's 58 housemates and ' 46 housemates.
Similar to the franchise's previous seasons, Big Brother invited guests to his house for special purposes.
Notable houseguests for this season were ex-housemates from previous seasons such as Melai Cantiveros, Jason Francisco, Anthony Semerad and David Semerad. Franzen Fajardo, Baron Geisler, Beauty Gonzalez, Rica Paras returned as house players. Previous winners, Nene Tamayo, Beatriz Saw, and Keanna Reeves, who became Fairy Godmothers.
On Day 30, Big Brother announced the start of House Competitions, where the two Houses will compete for ten weeks for P150,000 at stake every week. The accumulated pot money for each House will be divided among the remaining housemates of each House after ten weeks. Group immunity from nomination was also put at stake with the seventh and eighth challenges.
The Luxury House residents are known as Team High Voltage and the Industrial House denizens are codenamed Team Wayuk.
Below is the list of weekly tasks performed by the housemates. Each of the tasks below are "all-or-nothing" tasks; failure would mean no budget for the next week. There are separate weekly tasks for each House.
The first weekly task was done by the first batch of housemates in the Slums.
Teams High Voltage and Team Wayuk were formed on Day 30. Weekly tasks prior to Day 30 were done by the same sets of housemates, with the exception of the very first weekly task. On Day 22, Jaz and Seichang transferred to the Luxury House and joined in doing Team High Voltage's extended 3rd weekly task. On Day 31, Luz and Seichang transferred to the Industrial House and became part of Team Wayuk.
Starting Day 71, the members of Teams High-Voltage and Wayuk who were drafted into the top 14 were made to do their weekly task as one group.
Housemates from each houses will compete against each other, and the winner/s of the competition will be each house's HOH for week. The HOH will be granted immunity in the coming nomination.
The housemate first mentioned in each nomination gets two points, while the second gets one point. The percentage of votes shown is the percentage of votes to save unless otherwise stated. Each house would field at least the highest two point gatherers to the list of nominees.
During Week 1, all 13 official housemates and one unofficial housemate lived in the slums. On Day 8, Carlo, the unofficial housemate, became an official housemate, and a second batch of 15 official housemates entered the House. On Day 15, six reserved housemates entered the house. Among the six reserved, Reg and Deniesse are two to become official housemates. On Days 23 and 25, two reserved housemates entered. Seth became an official housemate on Day 26, and Ryan on Day 30.
On Day 8, Jaz, Kevin, Kim, Paco, Pamu and Seichang transferred to the Industrial House to be part of the Unli-day group. On Day 21, Diane, Joya and Wendy transferred to the Luxury House, while on Day 22, Jaz and Seichang transferred to the Luxury House and became part of the Unli-night group. The same day, the remaining Unli-night housemates transferred to the Luxury House when the Slums was demolished. On Day 31, Luz and Seichang transferred to the Industrial House to be part of the Unli-Day group. On Day 66, the two groups switched houses, with the Unli-day group residing in the Luxury House and the Unli-night group residing in the Industrial house.
On Day 71, all housemates were instructed to live in the Industrial House, with the top 14 housemates going to the Luxury House at specified periods of time in the following week. On Days 77 and 79, Deniesse and Slater became part of Team Wayuk. On Day 78, the Industrial House was closed. On Day 106, the top 10 housemates merged into one group.
Challenges granting immunity were held before nominations. For the first nomination, secret challenges were held in both houses which granted the winner(s) immunity from being nominated. From the second nomination until the fifth nomination, and from the tenth nomination onwards, Head/s of Household (HOH) competitions were held in both houses, where the winner/s will be granted immunity in the coming nomination. For the seventh and eighth nominations, House Competitions also have group immunity in the coming nomination put at stake.
For this season, former housemates chosen by Big Brother were asked to come back as House Players, as indicated in the nominations table. The Day numbers indicate the day the house players entered the house. Paco, who was evicted on Day 106, did not leave the house and was tasked to be a house player. On Day 141, he was reinstated as an official wildcard housemate. Kigoy and Luz re-entered on Day 121 as part of the M6 twist, with Kigoy being Forcibly re-evicted on Day 124 and Luz re-evicted on Day 127. Seichang, who was evicted on Day 127, did not leave the house until Day 134.
Starting the 13th eviction, the "Power of One" rule was implemented wherein the public may only vote once per day per Sim card. Overnight voting was also done during the 6th, 8th, 14th and 15th nomination rounds, as well as the Big Night. Hour-long voting was done during the final nomination round.
Legend:
<div style="overflow:auto; padding:4px;"> </div>
Team Wayuk won nomination immunity for winning their House Competition, resulting in all nominees coming from team High- Voltage only.<br> As part of Big Brother's punishment to the housemates for failing the eighth House Competition, all of the remaining housemates will nominate one of their teammates face to face as the least deserving housemate. Team High Voltage picked Wendy, while Team Wayuk picked Deniesse. Wendy and Deniesse will do a task assigned by Big Brother. Also, Kevin, Pamu and Tin went on the Big Road Trip but three failed to accomplish their task resulting in an eviction between Deniesse and Wendy decided by overnight voting.<br> Tin was automatically nominated after failing a challenge based on the Big Road Trip. Paco reaped the automatic nomination for talking about the nomination process. Both nominations were only made known to the nominees. Despite being evicted as a housemate, Paco stayed in the house and became a House Player.<br> Because of not fully succeeding in the Great Marinduque Adventure, Slater agreed to be automatically nominated. As Head of Household, Divine was tasked to replace a nominee and she chose to replace Deniesse with Biggel. As House Player, Paco was tasked to add a housemate to the list of nominees and he chose Eting.<br> Big Brother implemented a new nomination scheme wherein a housemate will nominate three other housemates. The housemate first mentioned gets three points, second mentioned gets two points, while the third gets one point. All points towards Paco do not count as he is a house player. Voting for the nominees was stopped due to Deniesse's forced eviction as a result of grave House violations she committed. Because of this, Carlo, who got the fewest votes, was not evicted. Meanwhile, the public were asked to vote on Paco's fate as a House Player. The results denoted that Paco should stay.<br> The housemates underwent a mock nomination before the normal nomination process wherein only Kevin, Seichang and Slater changed their votes. Because of this, original nominee Slater was saved, while Divine was added to the list of nominees. Despite being evicted as a housemate, Seichang stayed in the house.<br> Big Brother asked the M5 to automatically nominate someone from the remaining housemates and they chose Tin. The housemates underwent a mock face to face nomination before the normal nomination process. Because of this, Carlo was added to the list of nominees.<br> Big Brother implemented the "Power of One" rule wherein if a housemate receives even one vote, he will automatically be put on the nomination list. Any votes cast by Paco (Divine and Slater) and for Paco do not count. On Day 139, Paco was given a chance to become a wildcard housemate with the public deciding his fate. The wildcard housemate public poll also used the "Power of One" rule.<br> Because the housemates failed the "Big Shot for the Big Slot" challenge, only four slots are open for the finale and one of the final five has to be evicted in a mid-week eviction.<br> For the last three open voting rounds, votes are reset after each eviction. Only votes cast after Divine's eviction are counted towards the Big Night total, unlike previous seasons wherein all votes cast during open voting (including between evictions) were counted.
Below is the eviction voting result from the first to fourth eviction round. This voting system was stopped after the fourth eviction round.
On Day 51, the housemates were asked to nominate who they think deserves to get a gift from Big Brother for Christmas. The six recipients, together with the other housemates, must work together to get the gifts. The housemate first mentioned in each nomination gets two points, while the second gets one point.
For the 12th and 13th Nominations, the housemates underwent mock nominations before the normal nomination process.
On Day 149, Big Brother ordered the remaining five housemates to make their ideal Big Four list (from first to fourth place) for the upcoming Big Night using a podium in the living room.
On March 31, 2012, 154 days after the season started, at the Quirino Grandstand, Slater Young was declared the Big Winner after amassing 40.02% of the votes and took home â±2,000,000, in addition to other special prizes. Leaving before him were Second Big Placer Pamu with 21.49% of the votes who received â±1,000,000, Third Big Placer Biggel with 21.39% of the votes who received â±500,000, and Fourth Big Placer Paco with 17.10% of the votes who received â±300,000. Slater thus earned the distinction of being the first male winner of a regular season four years after was declared as the first male winner of the entire franchise. The Big Night voting was only done overnight, with the Power of One rule in effect. This is also the first and only season wherein only vote percentages are shown and not the actual number of votes. The theme of the Big Night is Filipino style.
This table shows the summary of votes as obtained by each of the Big 4 in the Big Night.