You should always program the primary and alternates for the simple fact that occasionally if not for only temporary the system may switch controls and you will not hear anything if your radio is trunking and there is no active control channel being monitored by the radio.
ofd8001 you are wrong in your assessment. A scanner properly trunking a system in control only mode is all that is necessary. The scanner doesn't scan freqs A, B, C, D and E. It listens on C only and depending on whether your scanner is set to pick up all TGs (search or open) vs. only those you program in (scan or closed) will the A, B, D and E become relevent to your listening.
The only benefit for programming all system freqs in is if you need to attenuate one or more of the voice channels (but not all) because of intermod or interference, or perhaps for usage during failsafe mode, (although I think it probably would require the channels be programmed as conventional and wouldn't work if the system were programmed properly as a trunked system.)
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